Definition of "superorder" []

• A taxonomic category of related organisms ranking below a class or subclass and above an order. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Ancestral elephant shrews were members of a “superorder” or “cohort” of beasts called Afrotheria that evolved in Africa more than 100 million years ago."
• "Since Linnaeus, taxonomists have added the categories phylum and family, along with numerous subdivisions such as subclass, superorder, subfamily, subspecies, and others."
• "The study also bolsters recent research suggesting that bats are more closely related on the tree of evolution to horses, dogs, cows, moles and dolphins -- all members of the superorder Laurasiatheria -- than humans, monkeys, flying lemurs and mice, which belong to the Euarchontoglires superorder."