Basal mammals: Guess what they evolved to become.

Can you guess
(or do you know) which of these taxa evolved to become a human? a killer whale? a rabbit? a giraffe? a bat? a pangolin?

H. Onychodectes – basal to all large herbivorous mammals, including giraffes.

G. Maelestes – basal to tenrecs and toothed whales.

F. Tupaia – basal to the gnawing clade including rodents and rabbits.

E. Ptilocercus – basal to Primates, including humans (but note the loss of all premaxillary teeth in this extant taxon).

D. Palaechthon – basal to flying lemurs, bats and pangolins.

C. Monodelphis – basal to all placental mammals.

B. Asioryctes – basal to Monodelphis and all placental mammals.

A. Eomaia – basal to all therian mammals (placentals + marsupials).

These are the basalmost taxa
in various clades of Eutherian (placental) mammals. Not a lot of difference to start (which makes scoring difficult). So much potential at the end. Eomaia goes back to the Early Cretaceous, so it’s not difficult to imagine the radiation of these taxa throughout the Cretaceous.

This falls in line with
the splitting of the African golden mole (Chrysochloris) from its South American sister, Necrolestes, a diversification, migration and split that had to happen before Africa split from South American in the Early Cretaceous.

Sharp-eyed readers
will note the re-identification of bones and teeth in Palaechthon, Ptilocercus and Tupaia. It’s been a long weekend trying to figure out long-standing problems in this portion of the LRT. Some of these taxa were some of the first studied and my naiveté was the source of the earlier disinformation, now corrected. If you see any errors here, please advise and, if valid, repairs will be made.