Avila and Mothé 2021 try to show how South American wombats (marsupials) arose from African hyraxes (placentals)

Continuing from the Avila and Mothé 2021 abstract:
“Here, we recognized and defined a new supraordinal lineage of Eutheria, the Sudamericungulata, after performing morphological phylogenetic analyses including all lineages of SANUs and Eutheria. The SANUs resulted as non-monophyletic; thus, Meridiungulata is not a natural group; Litopterna and “Didolodontidae” are Panameriungulata and closer to Laurasiatheria than to other “Meridiungulata” (Astrapotheria, Notoungulata, Pyrotheria, and Xenungulata).”

No Eutheria = Placentalia, so wombats (= Pyrotherium, Fig. 2) are not members.
Yes Liptoterns are perissodactyl placentals, so not closely related to pyrothere marsupials.
Mixed Some traditional notoungulates are placentals in the LRT, others are marsupials. This is why it is a good idea to avoid suprageneric statements based on defunct clades, if possible.

Continuing from the Avila and Mothé 2021 abstract:
“The other “Meridiungulata” is grouped in the Sudamericungulata, as a new monophyletic lineage of Afrotheria Paenungulata, and shared a common ancestor with Hyracoidea.”

Continuing from the Avila and Mothé 2021 abstract:
“The divergence between the African and South American lineages is estimated to Early Paleocene, and their interrelationships support the Atlantogea (Ezcurra and Agnolin 2012) biogeographic model.”

Geography
Let’s not forget that there was a post-Cretaceous faunal exchange between three linked southern continents: South America, Antarctica and Australia. At the same time there was a growing Atlantic Ocean between South America and Africa. The Atlantogea hypothesis (Ezcurra and Agnolin 2012) is not supported by the LRT.

All deep time genomic studies (so far) have been wastes of time and effort.
By that I mean, the resulting sister taxa too often don’t look anything like one another. And they should resemble one another if they are related to one another. Endemic viruses affect DNA testing and split clades into geographic areas, too often gathering dissimilar local taxa together. Just look at the Avila and Mothé 2021 results linking rodents with ungulates and hyraxes with wombats.

Colleagues, please put away your test tubes full of genes
and start building a wide-gamut, trait-based phylogeny, like the LRT. Then you will have the powerful tool you’ve been looking for, one you can use for the rest of your life to avoid the untenable and scientifically embarrassing results recovered in most, if not all current deep time genomic tests.