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Afrotheria (literally, "African mammal") includes seven groups of mammals with little superficial resemblance to one another: elephants, sea cows (dugongs and manatees), hyraxes, aardvark, sengis, golden moles, and tenrecs. Despite their apparent dissimilarities, they are now widely recognized as having descended from a single common ancestor that existed somewhere in what is now Africa and had already diverged from the common ancestor of most other placental mammals. The IUCN had already formed separate specialist groups focusing on elephants and sea cows, so when the Afrotheria Specialist Group was formed in 2001, it was charged with providing expertise on the remaining five "overlooked" groups of mammals.
