Dr Polaris video looks at post-asteroid mammals and birds

Response to scenes and text in the 16-minute video:

Your title is “How life bounced back” – but the script is all about ‘which’ life bounced back. I was hoping for more insight into ‘how’. No worries. Nobody knows, but there must have been several refugia world wide, perhaps near the poles.

@2:26 Aquilolamna is actually a relative of a primitive shark: Cladoselache.

@5:14 this is a genomic mammal tree. It omits fossil taxa. Use a phenomic (trait-based) tree that includes fossils, like the Large Reptile Tree (LRT) at ReptileEvolution.com

There you’ll find Leptictidium @4:44 is basal to Tenrec and Pakicetus leading to odontocetes.

There you’ll find Daubentonia, the extant aye-aye is a living multituberculate close to Jurassic Megaconus, thus one of the earliest placentals.

The LRT supports Wortman 1902 who found placentals appeared three times by convergence. Jurassic multituberculates were among these three. They are close to rodents.

Early Cretaceous Ambolestes is basal to the placental clade that gave rise to Carnivora, Primates and hoofed mammals.

Extant Phascogale (Fig 1) is a marsupial with an occasional semi-pouch that is basal to Ambolestes in the LRT. So, very primitive and transitional. You’ll note it resembles Nasua, the coatimundi, a late-surviving early placental.

@5:55 this is a genomic bird tree. It omits fossil taxa. Use a phenomic (trait-based) tree that includes fossils, like the Large Reptile Tree at ReptileEvolution. Galloanseres (= chickens and ducks) is not monophyletic in trait studies. This should be obvious. Ducks and geese have a long-legged fossil ancestor in Presbyornis.

@6:22 Asterornis is a goose plain and simple, already highly derived in the Late Cretaceous. That means all modern bird lineages, even Paleocene penguins, had radiated during the Cretaceous, as you noted in the video. We just don’t have most of their fossils yet.

@9:41 you introduce Paleocene Protungulatum, known from a single mandible with generalized teeth. Not much to go on. More unmentioned taxa are better represented.

@10:17 Arctocyonids are not close to ungulates in the LRT hypothesis of interrelationships. They are creodonts. You reported, “none of them looked like hoofed mammals on the surface.” Believe your eyes.

@11:27 you report on Militocodon a relative of Periptychus @11:56. Those are monodelphid marsupials, close to the living Monodelphis domestica.

@12:27 Ectoconus is a relative of a long list of large archaic and extinct placental mammals, like Arsinoitherium and Uintatherium, that ultimately gave rise to living sloths and elephants.

@12:24 mesonychids are also creodonts, not ungulates.

Thanks for the presentation.

Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2025/04/29/dr-polaris-video-looks-at-post-asteroid-mammals-and-birds/