On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 at 7:23:38 PM UTC-5, Oxyaena wrote:
> Turns out that Anthracobunids are stem-perissodactyls, as are the
> Desmostylians, which have been also re-evaluated as stem-perissodactyls.
> If this is the case, then much convergent evolution must have happened
> between Anthracobunids and early Proboscideans (e.g. /Numidotherium/,
> /Eritherium/, /Phosphatherium/, /Daoutherium/, /Barytherium/,
> /Moerotherium/), which given the similar habitats at the time of
> deposition, isn't at all surprising.
>
> What is surprising is that for over 30 years, it has long been regarded
> (based on some rather fragmentary remains), that they were either
> relatives of Proboscideans or /very/ early Proboscideans. Another
> surprising find is that Desmostylia, which was long regarded as a member
> Paeunungulates, which given the recent revision of Anthracobunid
> phylogeny, we find that they are stem-perissodactyls!
How well supported is this finding? And what happened to the huge
Afrotheria-Laurasiatheria split, with perissodactyls in the latter and
paenungulates in the former? See the very detailed tree in:
r_anthracobunid_phylogeny.png
I always was suspicious of "Afrotheria": might there not have been a
lot of lateral transfer of genes by retroviruses, with insect vectors
endemic to Africa playing a big role?
> What lies in store for the rest of the so-called "Paenungulates", such
> as /Ocepeia/ or Embrithopoda?
Lots of revisions and revisions of revisions...of phylogenetic trees,
is my guess.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/