I look forward to your response, but I am quite surprised at
your initial comment. As one who prides himself on caring only
about the data, it seems you want to go beyond it to assume that
certain creatures lived before there is any evidence of their
existence. If you can assume, for example, that the genus
_Mesonyx_ lived long before there is any fossil evidence of it,
what is to prevent me from assuming that its alleged descendant is
even older? Two can play that game. If we are not limited by the
data in our analysis, it's a free-for-all.
Ashby