 Still today it is widely assumed that "Elphidotarsius" from the mid to late Paleocene gave rise to "Carpodaptes" which lived in the late Paleocene and subsequently gave rise to "Carpolestes" from the early Eocene.As a result, they have been used as biostratigraphic indicators in a variety of paleontological digs.However, the phylogenetic picture has been complicated by the discovery in Asia of both ancestral and derived carpolestids in the same stratigraphic layer.