Golden mole Chrysochloris: yet another placental derived from marsupials

It happened again,
this time underground as another placental is derived from marsupials (for the third time).

This time, only this genus, Chrysochloris (Figs 1, 2), the golden mole of Southern Africa, is involved in this transition. No other genera.

The golden mole,
Chrysochloris (Figs 1, 2), gives birth in the placental fashion, depositing newborns into a nest… and yet… it’s closet relatives in the large reptile tree (LRT, 2322 taxa) are marsupial moles, like Notoryctes (Fig 3).

Here (Fig 1) the DGS colors of the skull were recently updated.

Chrysochloris asiatica
(Cape golden mole, Linnaeus 1758, extant, 8-20 cm in length) nests with the marsupial, Notoryctes in the LRT, thereby developing a placental mode of reproduction convergent with the two other placental origins.

A Middle Jurassic ancestor, Docofossor, was also a digger.

The golden mole has taken to a life underground,
with reduced ears and absent eyes, large fore claws and enormous shoulder muscles. Note the displacement of the scapulae to the top of the neck. The pisiform evolves to become a second ulna. The golden mole third ungual is large, sharp and split. The other digits are reduced. Digit 5 is a vestige. The lateral temporal fenestra and the jaw adductors therein, have been squeezed out as the squamosal laminates to the cranium. Like tenrecs, golden moles have a cloaca (combined anus and genitals), and lack a scrotum, but golden moles are not closely related to tenrecs in the LRT. Odontocetes are related to tenrecs.

The South African range of the golden mole
(Fig 4) reflects its Mesozoic proximity to Antarctica and Australia, home of most of the world’s variety of marsupials and all the other marsupial moles (Fig 3).

According to tradition, spelled out in Wikipedia,
“Despite their extreme evolutionary convergence with moles, their closest relatives are the otter shrews and tenrecs. They are more distantly related to other insectivorous African mammals such as aardvarks and elephant shrews, and even more distantly related to elephants and sirenians.”

This is another nail in the coffin for deep time genomics
and the genomic clade Afrotheria.

The LRT refutes that traditional hypothesis of interrelationships. The stumbling block for prior workers was their unwillingness to test marsupial ancestors for Chrysochloris, despite what you read in the next paragraph.

Also spelled out, this time under Wikipedia – Southern marsupial mole:
“Nineteenth century scientists believed that marsupials and eutherians had evolved from the same primitive ancestor and were looking for a living specimen that would serve as the missing link. Because the marsupial mole closely resembled the golden moles of Africa, some scientists concluded that the two were related and that they had found the proof. This, however, is not the case, as became obvious by examining better-preserved specimens that had a marsupial pouch. The striking similarities of the two species are, in fact, the result of convergent evolution.”

This is the stumbling block.  A pouch in one. It’s lack in another.
That is a fact. However…

I haven’t said this for awhile, but this practice is called, “Pulling a Larry Martin.”

Don’t resolve your phylogenetic issues on one or a dozen traits. Run your wide gamut analysis using at least 150 to 220 multi-state traits, like the LRT does.

Let maximum parsimony rule. That’s how the LRT overcomes widespread and accepted, but misleading and mistaken hypotheses of convergence.

In case you run into this sentence in Wikipedia – Southern Marsupial Mole:
“Although the family Notoryctidae is poorly represented in the fossil record there is evidence of at least one distinct genus Yalkaparidon, in the early Miocene sediments in the Riversleigh deposit in northern Australia.”

In the LRT, as mentioned above, Middle Jurassic Docofossor is ancestral to marsupial moles and Chrysochloris. Unrelated Yalkparidon is derived from arboreal Dactylopsila and ancestral to terrestrial Adalatherium, Groeberia and Vintana, the weird ones.

References
Linnaeus C 1758. Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. Tomus I. Editio decima, reformata.

wiki/Golden_mole
wiki/Southern_marsupial_mole

Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2024/09/27/golden-mole-chrysochloris-yet-another-placental-derived-from-marsupials/