Re: Dinos' loss was not mammals' gain

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> Olaf R. P. Bininda-Emonds, Marcel Cardillo, Kate E. Jones, Ross D. E.
> MacPhee, Robin M. D. Beck, Richard Grenyer, Samantha A. Price, Rutger A.
> Vos, John L. Gittleman & Andy Purvis: The delayed rise of present-day
> mammals, Nature 446, 507 -- 512 (29 March 2007)
>
> So... they constructed a gihugrongous supertree, and fed it into a 
> molecular
> dating program after aligning 66 genes for as many species on the tree as
> possible. I don't see why we shouldn't just regard the results as yet
> another set of molecular divergence date estimates. 30 calibration points
> were used. I'll try to get the supplementary information tomorrow to check
> what they are.
I have now downloaded the first part of the supplementary information. Table 
3 of 
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7135/extref/nature05634-s1.pdf 
lists the calibration points. It contains (at least) the following mistakes:

- *Monotrematum* is probably not a crown-group monotreme. Thus, Monotremata 
may be younger than 63.6 Ma.
- *Tribosphenomys* is far from being a crown-group rodent! Rodentia (unlike 
Rodentiamorpha) is younger than 57.25 Ma (...and I wonder where they got 
such a precise date...). Note that the reference Bininda-Emonds et al. cite 
makes this quite clear (it coins the name Rodentiamorpha).
- Not that I knew anything, but I'd be quite surprised if *Eodendrogale* 
were a crown-group scandentian. Thus, the crown-group of Scandentia may well 
be younger than 44.5 Ma.
- Same for *Dendrotherium* being a crown-group dermopteran.
- The genus *Tarsius* is 44.5 Ma old? Difficult to believe. I'd say a name 
change is in order.
- *Diacodexis* is a paraphyletic series of species around the base of 
Cetartiodactyla (which means that at least some of those species should get 
new genus names). Putting "*Diacodexis* sp." into Suiformes does therefore 
not look defensible to me, but I'll try to find the reference.
- Obviously, *Pakicetus* is not a crown-group whale. The crown-group of 
Cetacea (Autoceta) is much younger.
- *Eomanis* is far from a crown-group pangolin...
- I'd be very surprised if *Ageinia* turned out to be a crown-group bat. 
Thus, chances are high that the crown-group of Chiroptera is younger than 
52.2 Ma.
- I'd be surprised if *Riostegotherium* turned out to be a crown-group 
dasypodid. But that's outside my area of knowledge.
- The crown-group of Tubulidentata consists only of *Orycteropus*. Obviously 
*Myorycteropus* can't be part of that...
- *Nortedelphys* was indeed described as a didelphimorphian, but I don't buy 
it. It's "the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth" (as usual 
in the Mesozoic). In any case, considering it a _crown_ didelphimorphian 
really stretches it.
- Paucituberculata... all extant paucituberculates are caenolestids, and the 
fossil is most likely not one of those...
- I bet the fossil notoryctid is outside the crown-group.

Much sloppier work than I imagined.