Re: Neogondwana and Epitheria

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

Dear All,
     Continental break-up clearly did have *some* effects on dinosaurs and 
pterosaurs, as well as Cretaceous birds and mammals (and a lot of other 
Mesozoic life).  However, it was the K-T extinction "bottle-neck" which 
caused continental isolation to *profoundly* affect the further evolution of 
mammals and birds in the early Cenozoic.  There were no pterosaurs around 
after K-T on which to have such an effect (and even if a few hadrosaurs did 
survive, there was no evolutionary "radiation" there to affect either).
     On the subject of the GSA press release, "Dust Didn't Do It" seems 
pretty simplistic.  It would be more accurate to say:  "Dust Didn't Do It 
*Alone*, But It Certainly Made Things Worse".  And the acidic nature of that 
dust made it much deadlier than it would have been otherwise.  Hopefully 
Pope's paper will go into it much deeper than the press release did.
    Land-dwelling afrotherians were probably pretty much isolated in Africa 
until a land connection was made with Eurasia.  The only afrotherians that 
escaped Africa earlier in the Cenozoic were "not surprisingly" the marine 
groups (sirenians and desmostylians).  Those marine groups really get 
around, don't they!   :-)   And for those interested in precise clades, 
those two marine groups plus the proboscideans presently comprise 
Tethytheria.  Add embrithopods and hyraxes, you get Clade Uranotheria.  Add 
aardvarks to that, you get Pseudoungulata (and then add a few insectivore 
groups to complete Afrotheria).
    "Order" Bibymalagasia (genus Plesiorycteropus) is very problematic, but 
certainly could be afrotherian (whether it is close to aardvarks or not).  
Cross your fingers that we can isolate some bibymalagasian DNA.   DNA would 
also help with meridiungulates, but I think they are closer to 
boreoeutherians (perhaps as a sister group or even within it).  As for 
creodonts, I don't know enough about them to even hazard a guess (as always, 
I'm sure more fossils are needed).  I'm leaving them near Carnivora for the 
time being, but who knows where they might end up.  Still so much work to be 
done.
         ------ Cheers,  Ken
P.S.  If this post goes through okay, I'll then respond to Tim's "furcula" 
post, which discusses apomorphy-based taxa in general.


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