How primate ancestors survived the K-T extinction event “is unclear”… because the authors used GENOMICS!

From the Yale.edu website:
“How the tree-dwelling ancestors of primates survived the asteroid’s destruction is unclear. It’s possible that some forest fragments survived the calamity or that early primates and their relatives were ecologically flexible enough to modify their substrate preferences in a world mostly denuded of trees, [co-author] Sargis said.”

Or maybe because authors Hughes, Berv, Chester, Sargis and Field
used genes to construct their cladogram (Figs. 1–3). As everyone should know by now, genes too often provide false positives, like nesting bats with horses (Fig. 3). And elephants with armadillos. And, of course, gene studies omit fossil taxa.

I used to say genomics was the number two problem in paleontology.
Actually it’s the number two and number three problems. 1) results too often include false positives and 2) gene studies omit fossils. How can paleontologists omit fossils from their studies? They’re paleontologists! They are defined by fossils!

Without a valid phylogenetic context,
results in Hughes et al. are not just suspect, result are not just weird, results are completely untenable. And yet five PhDs, an editor or two and at least two referees warmly embraced this paper. Apparently no one bothered to check results, until today.

From the Yale.edu website:
“The analysis also suggests that some marsupial lineages may have resided in trees through the K-Pg extinction event, although the evidence for this finding is less robust than that supporting the conclusion about primates and their close relatives, Sargis said.”

Dismiss every conclusion in the Hughes et al. paper. Genomics in deep time studies too often recover false positives. We’ve known this for years. Too many results are blatantly false… and nobody raised an objection, nobody saw a red flag here.

Colleagues:
Put away your genomic studies. Put away your borrowed genomic studies. They don’t work. They recover false positives. They waste your time. They waste your students’ time. Student tuition helps pay your salaries. Once students figure out the deep time genomic scam, they will stop buying your textbooks and enrolling at your universities.

Create your own trait-based phylogenetic analyses.
Add fossils generously. Then you’ll have a valid phylogenetic cladogram. Then you can study whatever piques your interest in a valid phylogenetic context. Then you won’t be wasting your students’ time. Or your editors time. Or your referees’ time. Or your publishers’ time. Or your journalists’ time. Or your readers’ and critics’ time.

References
Hughes JJ, Berv JS, Chester SGB, Sargis EJ and Field DJ 2021. Ecological selectivity and the evolution of mammalian substrate preference across the K–Pg boundary. Ecology and Evolution. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.8114

https://news.yale.edu/2021/10/11/tree-dwelling-mammals-endured-after-asteroid-strike-destroyed-forests?fbclid=IwAR0c_me7FT2fM2lgRfdWlQf4Nqp-IHOcq_iTHKjg7O2Fghv4OXCtfIZFsFk