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Where to put Perissodactyls?

Threnody February 16, 2013 February 16, 2013

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So I was poking around the internet when I came across ongoing research into where to exactly place perissodactyls ('odd-toed ungulates" equids, tapirs, rhinos, and other fun extinct relatives of them) and a couple other animal groups, in the family tree of placental mammals. With advances in molecular phylogeny the genomes of the animals are being looked at to determine placement. The proposed clade enuungulata (true ungulates) proposes that even-toed ungulates and odd-toed ungulates are closely related, but more recent research is showing that they are likely not as close as first proposed and may be closer to pigs, whales and carnivors. Meanwhile, pegasoferae includes [b]bats[/b] in the clade. So far none of these are fully supported from what I've found, and more concrete placement is still to be determined. I have links to the Wiki pages of the proposed clades and close relatives which include more links to papers on the subjects. Euungulata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euungulata Zoomata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooamata Pegasoferae http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasoferae#cite_note-5 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9402-bats-and-horses-get-strangel… Obviously I don't have access to the DNA and enough insight into the research to draw my own conclusions. I just wanted to share this since it's fascinating to see what the possibilities may be. Also, fun distant horse relatives: World's largest extinct land mammal was a perissodaktyl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraceratherium An "if unicorns weren't so dainty" relative of the rhino http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium And google baby tapirs. Seriously. The cute.

rabbitsfizz Sat, 02/16/2013 - 10:47

I think they need to rethink some of this- bats are only closer to, for example , whales, than they are to , for example, Aardvarks (that is just a guess, btw!) it does not necessarily mean they are, in fact, [i]closely[/i] related to them, just that they are closer related to them than they are to other animals, doesn't it have something to do with the way they use echolocation??. I was really interested to read about the Whales, though,and their relatives- I think we have known for some time they are (can't remember the correct term) animals that have re-entered the water, so I guess it makes sense that may be related to pigs......
Personally I am still campaigning to have "Eohippus" reinstated as a name- it makes NO sense to me that rules worked out by men who were not far from being fossils themselves, in the 19th century, should prevail today!!

Threnody Sat, 02/16/2013 - 13:12

^ I agree with you.

I don't know how true it is, but I've heard eohippus is being used to describe a genus of hyracotherium who contributed to horses. But I haven't seen anything saying it's official. "Dawn horse" always seemed like a better description than "hyrax-like beast". Especially because it makes some people think hyraxes are closely related to horses.

rabbitsfizz Sun, 02/17/2013 - 10:54

What happened was, Hyracotherium was found and named before Eohippus- both completely separately. THEN they discovered they were both the same animal- apparently different bits of them had been identified- and Hyracotherium had been named first so because of the antique way we name things, although it did not describe in any way whatsoever the fossil it was naming, the name stuck. This is not the only case of this happening but it is how we got stuck with Australopithecus to describe a very interesting fossil- can you think of a less interesting name? I mean honestly, you have made a world shattering find and you call it "Ape of the South" yeah, that does it for me!!
So, an animal not really related to the hyrax gets saddled with a name that means "hyrax like" when the perfectly descriptive "dawn horse" gets rejected.
Makes no sense to me and makes no sense to a lot of people with far more letters after their name than me, either!