Vermilingua is a peculiar group of xenarthran placental mammals with well-established phylogenetic relationships based on morphological and molecular data, but until now, no combined analysis of those data types. Here we perform the first total-evidence phylogenetic analysis of Vermilingua and estimate divergence times for living and fossil anteaters with a tip-dating approach, using the Fossilized Birth-Death model in a Bayesian framework. Using combined analyses, we recovered as monophyletic the two families, Cyclopedidae and Myrmecophagidae, as in previous studies, although our revised morphological data alone do not support the monophyly of Cyclopedidae. We show how the combination of molecular and morphological data indirectly affects the position and support for fossil taxa even though molecular datasets do not contain direct information for them. The estimated divergence times of Palaeomyrmidon and Protamandua are much older than the ages of those fossils, reinforcing the scarcity of the vermilinguan fossil record. In addition, we obtained evidence that the extinct Neotamandua is an ancestor of the extant Myrmecophaga, not a sister taxon as in previous studies, that did not incorporate the possibility of anagenetic evolution between fossil and living taxa.

中文翻译：

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Vermilingua（哺乳动物：Pilosa）的总证据系统发育和分化时间

Vermilingua 是一组特殊的异种胎盘哺乳动物，基于形态学和分子数据具有完善的系统发育关系，但直到现在，还没有对这些数据类型进行综合分析。在这里，我们使用贝叶斯框架中的化石出生-死亡模型，对 Vermilingua 进行了首次全证据系统发育分析，并通过尖端约会方法估计了活食蚁兽和化石食蚁兽的分化时间。使用组合分析，我们恢复了两个科，Cyclopedidae 和 Myrmecophagidae 的单系，与之前的研究一样，尽管我们修改后的形态学数据本身并不支持 Cyclopedidae 的单系。我们展示了分子和形态数据的组合如何间接影响化石分类群的位置和支持，即使分子数据集不包含它们的直接信息。Palaeomyrmidon 和 Protamandua 的估计分歧时间比这些化石的年龄要早得多，这加强了 vermilinguan 化石记录的稀缺性。此外，我们获得的证据表明，已灭绝的 Neotamandua 是现存 Myrmecophaga 的祖先，而不是之前研究中的姊妹类群，没有纳入化石和活类群之间发生遗传进化的可能性。