Re: Condylarths (TINGAMARRA REVISITED)

[ELurio@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/18/01 10:15:47 PM, kinman@hotmail.com writes:

<<  Hyrax??   You picked a very bad example.  Hyraxes are pseudoungulates 
(along with aardvarks, sirenians and elephants), and it is very uncertain 
that they are closely related to true ungulates.  So any resemblance you 
might imagine between hyraxes and condylarths may be a combination of 
plesiomorphies and perhaps some convergence (such as pseudo-hooves vs. true 
hooves). >>

Guess what? EVERYTHING was closely related during the Cretaceous!!!! When 
last I read [around five years ago, I got a copy of the article somewhere], 
it was said that hyraxes were more closely related to prissidactyls than 
anything else, making them ungulates. 

<<If you want to defend condylarthra as a paraphyletic group, I have no 
objection to that, but I only recognize those paraphyletic groups that are 
still useful (and I concluded quite some time ago that Condylartha was both 
useless and confusing, and the Tingamarra assignment is a perfect example.  
I would definitely not use the resemblance to a hyrax (which is probably 
rather superficial and/or due to a generalized primitive eutherian 
morphotype)...>>

Since you say that condylarthyn resemblance to a hyrax may be due to a 
generalized primitive eutherian morphotype, and it's skeleton clearly shows 
it to be an ungulate, then it seems to me that hyraxes resemble primitive 
ungulates, it "looks like" what a condylarth would. 

eric l.