lpetrich

The taxon Afrotheria is the name of a curious grouping of mammals that comes out of molecular-taxonomy efforts, but that has no apparent justification in possible shared macroscopic features.

It includes:

Macroscelidea : Elephant shrews
Afrosoricida
- Tenrecidae : Tenrecs
- Chrysochloridae : Golden moles
Tubulidendata : Aardvarks
Paenungulata
- Hyracoidea : Hyraxes
- Tethytheria
- - Sirenia : Sea cows
- - Proboscidea : Elephants

The name comes from all but elephants and sea cows only living in or near Africa, which had been isolated by continental drift for much of the last 100 million years.

But in Molecular Biology and Evolution, a recently-published paper discusses the finding of a family of Short Interspersed Elements (SINE's) that only exists in Afrotheria ("AfroSINE'"). A subfamily with a deletion in the middle is only present in Paenungulata, a group proposed long before Afrotheria.

So it's nice to see a coherent picture getting more and more coherent.