When whale experts get into trouble, and don’t seem to care

Taxon exclusion is once again today’s topic.
The cladogram in Geisler et al. 2014 (Fig. 1`) passed the review process even though it nested Hippopotamidae with Georgiacetaus, here provided with graphics of the two skulls to illustrate the absurdity. The odontocete portion of the same cladogram (the lower 2/3s) does not mismatch sister taxa, but the outgroup portion is not so carefully constructed. It is cherry-picked. The article authors, editors and referees let this happen. Until now, no one has raised a hand to say ‘this is wrong and this is why.’

Geisler et al. 2014 reported,
“All extant odontocetes seem to echolocate; however, exactly when and how this complex behaviour—and its underlying anatomy—evolved is largely unknown.” Geisler et al 2914 made no mention of Gould 1965, who found evidence for echolocation in tenrecs (Fig. 2), extant rat-sized denizens of Madagascar that nest basal to echolocating odoncetes in the LRT. The phylogenetic analysis that nested tenrecs with odontocetes was first presented here in 2016.

Bottom line:
If the ‘closely related’ taxa in your cladogram do not look like taxa that could have evolved from the outgroup taxa, then go back in and add taxa until they do resemble one another, no matter if you can get away with it or not. Do not cherry-pick taxa. Let your wide gamut and comprehensive cladogram tell you which taxa are outgroups and ingroups. If you don’t have one of those, start one today.

This is not an isolated incident,
as longtime readers know.

References
Geisler JH, Colbert MW and Carew JL 2014. A new fossil species supports an early origin for toothed whale echolocation. Nature 508:383–386.
Gould E 1965. Evidence for Echolocation in the Tenrecidae of Madagascar
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 109 (6): 352-360. online here.

An online manuscript on the triple origin of whales is found on ResearchGate.org here.