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Re: [dinosaur] Solenodon venom evolution since Cretaceous (free pdf)



 
solenodons and shrews following their divergence over 70 million years ago
 
I'm pretty sure such an age is only found in miscalibrated molecular analyses. The entire Paleogene fossil record of what may be the total group of Lipotyphla (there is, of course, no Cretaceous record) used to be referred to "Soricomorpha" or "Erinaceomorpha"; molecular phylogenies have since shown that Erinaceidae and Soricidae are very closely related, so that most extant "erinaceomorphs" and "soricomorphs" are nothing of the sort, and morphology has followed suit; the following paper cautiously argues that there's no fossil evidence of crown-group lipotyphlans older than about 50 Ma. Molecular biologists tend to be unfamiliar with the paleontological literature and so tend to use calibration dates that are based on outdated understandings of the fossil record, Paleocene "erinaceomorphs" for example.
 
(That's the subject of a manuscript I'm writing right now.)
 
Tonya A. Penkrot & Shawn P. Zack (2016)
Tarsals of Sespedectinae (?Lipotyphla) from the middle Eocene of southern California, and the affinities of Eocene ‘erinaceomorphs’
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 36(6): e1212059
DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2016.1212059
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2016.1212059