Re: Sengis (was RE: Pterosaur diversity (was: Re: Waimanu))

[Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

T. Michael Keesey wrote:

> Yes, but this doesn't mean they've gotten smaller over time (which is what 
> I think Nick was saying), does it? Among afrotheres, only tubulidentates 
> (aardvarks) and tethytheres (sea cows + elephants) are large (and hyracoids 
> are kind of medium-sized). It seems to me the ancestral afrotheres would 
> probably have been the size of macroscelideans (sengis) and afrosoricidans 
> (golden moles + tenrecs), i.e., fairly small.

Yes, this is what threw me too.  I was thinking of elephant shrews... sorry, 
sengis (a much cooler name I wasn't aware of)... in the context of Cope's 
rule.  I've been following (or tried to follow) the tortured systematic 
treatment of macroscelideans, including their proposed link to apheliscines 
(Nature 434: 497-501).  But considering just how many weird and wonderful 
mammals are packed into the Afrotheria, it's anybody's guess what the 
ur-afrothere looked like - or how big it was.  The apheliscines are the 
oldest known afrotheres (AFAIK), and they were pretty small.

Cheers

Tim