SVP 2021 abstracts – 03: Don’t mix tenrecs with mongooses

Sulser and MacPhee 2021
mistakenly consider an extinct Madagascar mongoose, Plesiorycteropus (Fig. 1, which we looked at earlier here), a close relative of the extant Madagascar tenrecs (e.g. Tenrec, Hemicentetes (Fig. 2). Despite a similar sloping rostrum Plesioryctropus is not a tenrec in the large reptile tree (LRT, 1988+ taxa). Taxon exclusion is to blame here. College textbooks and Wikipedia are also out-of-date on this matter.

Traditional tenrecomorph taxa include unrelated hedge hogs, otter shrews and mongooses (see above, and links below from 2016). Not yet found in vertebrate paleo textbooks, or in this abstract, tenrecs are basal to walking whales, like Pakicetus (FIg 2) and echolocating odontocetes.

“Distinct clusters form in the tenrec endocast morphospace corresponding to the independent evolution of aquatic and fossorial behaviors, with marked shape differences within the olfactory and cortical regions of the brain. Implications for the ancestral state of the Tenrecidae and the sensory system of the enigmatic fossil Plesiorycteropus are also discussed. These results
showcase remarkable instances of sensory convergence within the tenrecomorpha and provide a template for inter- and intra- clade analyses of this unique branch of the mammal tree.”

Stop depending on textbooks and build your own cladogram. Then phylogenetic mistakes like this would not happen so often.

References
Gould E 1965. Evidence for Echolocation in the Tenrecidae of Madagascar
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 109 (6): 352-360. online here.
Sulser RB and MacPhee RD 2021. An island apart: Endocast variation with the tenrecomorpha. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology abstracts.