Extant possum Dactylopsila now nests with extinct apatemyid Sinclairella
This is why
the mammal subset of the large reptile tree (LRT, 2340 taxa) has been such a headache for such a long time due to: 1. convergence, 2. crushed 2D fossils that prevent observation of more than one aspect, and typically 3. a few lost parts of importance for matrix scoring.
Here
the extinct traditional apatemyid, Sinclairella (Fig 1), now nests instead with the extant possum Dactylopsila (Fig 1). This is a matter of fine tuning. Apatemyids are still close by.
Both have/had a skull 2x wider than tall and many other shared traits.
That skull width trait may have been present
in Heterohyus and Apatemys, but both of these taxa are crushed flat in lateral aspect (Fig 1), so this trait cannot be scored in the LRT. Two-dimensional fossils are typically crushed to expose their widest dimensions. So Heterohyus and Apatemys likely had narrow skulls in vivo.
Similarly,
the twin parasagittal crests of Sinclairella may have been also present in Apataemys and Heterohyus (Fig 1), but again, the preserved lateral exposure does not permit observation of this trait.
The present LRT is so fragile that changes to apatemyidae sometimes show up in shifts in Artiodactyla. Maybe fewer changes like that will appear as scoring improves.
Some of that fragility is due to scoring that is not precise, as I discover day-after-day as corrections enter. You might remember, the first time I added Sinclairella to the LRT it nested with Apatemys and placental tree shrews, hopefully corrected here. They’re still not far away.
You don’t get these problems in genomics, nor do you get this down-to-the-species resolution and trait-by-trait analysis. Maybe that’s why mammal taxonomists threw up their hands and gave up on phenomics in favor of genomics.
References
Jepsen GL 1934. A revision of the American Apatemyidae and the description of a new genus, Sinclairella, from the White River Oligocene of South Dakota. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 74(4): 287-305.
wiki/Sinclairella – not yet posted
Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2026/11/14/extant-possum-dactylopsila-now-nests-with-extinct-apatemyid-sinclairella/
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