Palaeoamasia is an extinct herbivorous paenungulate mammal of the embrithopod order, making it distantly related to elephants, sirenians, and hyraxes.

Palaeoamasia fossils have been found in Turkish deposits of the Çeltek Formation, dating to the Ypresian.

nov. fossil is the youngest found to date, extending the period of survival of the genus to the early Oligocene.

[2] Embrithopods are a group of early Cenozoic mammals with evolutionary roots in Northern Africa, eventually traveling over the Neotethys Sea to the Eurasian Eocene island of Pontides.

Part of the reason the embrithopods living in the Orhaniye Basin are thought to have been living on an island is the odd nature of the associated mammalian fauna, which includes anachronistic taxa such as pleuraspidotheriid condylarths, but lacks the (otherwise ubiquitous) rodents, perissodactyls, and artiodactyls.

[3] A recent stable isotope study concluded that Arsinoitherium, an African embrithopod, was terrestrial, not semi-aquatic as originally believed.

This derived feature of having two prominent transverse crests on upper molars is only found in embrithopods.