[HN Gopher] Fossil tells the 'tail' of an ancient beast
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       Fossil tells the 'tail' of an ancient beast
        
       Author : wglb
       Score  : 10 points
       Date   : 2023-05-29 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | akiselev wrote:
       | The world of _Gondwanatheres_ is fascinating! I haven 't looked
       | at the most recent research but the controversy over their
       | placement is very active and trying to figure out the current
       | state of the controversy requires basically pouring over every
       | relevant paper from the last few years.
       | 
       | Wikipedia currently lists them as part of the _Allotheria_ clade
       | which we 're not even truly sure were real mammals. It's not
       | clear whether they are like marsupials or whether they laid eggs
       | like monotremes. It's not clear if all the members of
       | _Allotheria_ even belong together, which makes placing the clade
       | fraught with danger. The only nearly complete skeleton from that
       | clade was probably a carnivore because they found a little
       | dinosaur skeleton inside it.
       | 
       | It's a giant, fun mess and I suspect we'll never know how to
       | precisely place them without phylogenetic evidence.
        
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       (page generated 2023-05-29 23:01 UTC)