Dissacus: transitional between oreodonts and mesonychids

This post follows in the wake of a series ofrecent updates
as Dissacus is moved back closer to mesonychids, where it was originally nested. Dissacus now nests transitional between oreodonts and mesonychids in the large reptile tree (LRT, 1968+ taxa; subset Fig. 4).

Perhaps it was “remarkable” due to taxon exclusion. Gheerbrant et al. 2014 cherry-picked several suprageneric taxa (= bad idea), several generic taxa and no oreodonts, mesonychids or hippos. The authors also accepted the genomic clade, Afrotheria (= invalid hypothesis of interrelationships), which vertebrate paleontologists still accept and professors still teach.

Same lessons here as usual…
Add generic taxa to your cladogram. Stay away from suprageneric taxa. Stay away from genomics in deep time studies. You might have to do this outside the academic system because the current vertebrate paleontology textbooks and the professors who teach from this textbook still support these long-standing problems.

References
Bécel, A., et al. 2020. Evidence for a prolonged continental breakup resulting from slow extension rates at the eastern North American volcanic rifted margin, J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 125, e2020JB020093, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JB020093
Cope ED 1881. Notes on Creodonta. American Naturalist 15: 1018–1020.
Geisler JH 2001. New morphological evidence for the phylogeny of Artiodactyla, Cetacea, and Mesonychidae. American Museum Novitates 3344, 1-53.
Geisler J and McKenna MC 2007. A new species of mesonychian mammal from the lower Eocene of Mongolia and its phylogenetic relationships. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 52, 189-212.
Gheerbrant E, Amaghzaz M, Bouya B and Goussard F and Letenneur C 2014a. Discovery of the skull of Ocepeia (Middle Paleoceneof Morocco): First clude on the basal radiation of Afrotheria and Paenungulata (Placentalia). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology Program and abstracts 2014:137.
Gheerbrant E, Amaghzaz M, Bouya B and Goussard F and Letenneur C 2014b. Ocepeia (Middle Paleocene of Morocco): The Oldest Skull of an Afrotherian Mammal. PLoS ONE. 9 (2): e89739. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089739.
O’Leary MA 1998. Phylogenetic and morphometric reassessment of the dental evidence for a mesonychian and cetacean clade. In Thewissen, J. G. M. (ed) The Emergence of Whales: Evolutionary Patterns in the Origin of Cetacea. Plenum Press (New York), pp. 133-161.
O’Leary MA 1999. Parsimony analysis of total evidence from extinct and extant taxa and the cetacean-artiodactyl question (Mammalia, Ungulata). Cladistics 15, 315-330.
O’Leary MA 2001. The phylogenetic position of cetaceans: further combined data analyses, comparisons with the stratigraphic record and a discussion of character optimization. American Zoologist 41, 487-506.
Solé F, Godinot M, Laurent Y, Galoyer A and Smith T 2018. The European Mesonychid Mammals: Phylogeny, Ecology, Biogeography, and Biochronology. Journal of Mammalian Evolution. 25 (3): 339–379.

wiki/Dissacus
wiki/Mesonyx
wiki/Harpagolestes