The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

datasets were organized and classified by family and order as listed in McKenna and Bell (1997), even when such classification may be out of date. Prior to any analyses, all hypothetical ancestral taxa were removed from the datasets. Baraminic distance correlation (BDC) and multidimensional scaling (MDS) were calculated using BDISTMDS ( http://coresci.org/bdist.html) . For each baraminology analysis, we recorded the same diagnostic statistics as in Wood’s (2008b) previous survey of statistical baraminology studies. Analyses were classified as holobaramin, monobaramin, or inconclusive based on evaluation of the statistical baraminology results. Ideally, a holobaramin can be revealed by BDC showing significant, positive BDC between all members of the holobaramin and significant, negative BDC between the holobaramin members and all outgroup taxa. In practice, this pattern rarely obtains. Alternative patterns include significant, positive BDC between ingroup and outgroup and significant, negative BDC between taxa that also share significant, positive BDC with the same third taxon. MDS aids in the interpretation of the BDC results by confirming clusters of taxa reflected in the BDC results or by revealing complex geometric shapes of taxa (e.g., lines, arcs, or tetrahedra) that cause uninterpretable BDC patterns. Analyses that did not reveal clear clusters of taxa were classified as inconclusive. RESULTS We collected 80 character sets from the published literature, from which we performed 82 separate baraminology analyses. The types of characters were most frequently craniodental (43.9%), followed by craniodental with postcranial (28.0%). Only 11% included more types of characters (such as craniodental, postcranial, and soft tissue), and 9.8% consisted only of dental characters. Given the emphasis on holistic analysis in baraminology (Wood et al. 2003), analyses that use more types of characters should be preferred to analyses that use fewer. Especially tentative are any conclusions based solely on dental characters. We discovered evidence of discontinuity around a holobaramin in 57 (69.5%) of the 82 analyses. Three additional analyses (3.7%) revealed evidence of continuity without discontinuity (monobaramins), and the remaining 22 analyses (26.8%) were classified as inconclusive. A complete account of all results with references is included in the appendix. Of the 57 analyses that revealed a putative holobaramin, 25 were based on craniodental characters (43.9%), 15 on craniodental and postcranial characters (26.3%), and 6 on dental characters only (10.5%) (see Table 1). These fractions are not substantially different from the overall frequency of character types in the full set of 82 datasets. Of the 22 analyses that were inconclusive, 11 were based on craniodental characters (50.0%), 7 on craniodental and postcranial characters (31.8%), and only two on dental characters only (9.1%). Again, these fractions are not substantially different from the full set of datasets. The number of taxa and characters used in the analyses that revealed holobaramins were not significantly different from those that resulted in inconclusive results (Table 2). For the MDS analyses, the stress at three dimensions and the dimensions of minimum stress ( k min ) also did not differ significantly between analyses that identified holobaramins when compared to those that did not. In the BDC analyses, the median bootstrap value and the fraction of correlations with bootstrap values >90% (F 90 ) were also not significantly different in BDC analyses that revealed holobaramins than in those that did not. Based on the successful analyses, we identified 59 putative holobaramins, 49 of which corresponded to families, seven to subfamilies (or portions of families), two to superfamilies (or multiple families), and one (Sirenia) to an infraorder (Table 3). Our results reveal the first five Australian marsupial holobaramins identified by statistical baraminology: the extinct Palorchestidae, the rat kangaroos Hypsiprymnodontidae, the kangaroos Macropodidae, ringtail possums Pseudocheirinae, and the koalas Phascolarctidae. Other notable holobaramins first identified here include the Ornithorhynchidae (platypus), the Mephitidae (skunks), and the Sirenia (manatees). Ten of these groups had already been studied in baraminology analyses (Table 3). Previously identified holobaramins confirmed by this study include Didelphidae (possums), Felidae (cats), Erinaceinae (hedgehogs), and Hippopotamidae (hippos). The Talpidae (moles) were previously inconclusive in Wood’s (2009) study, but here they are identified as a holobaramin. The Ursidae (bears), Camelidae (camels), and Brontotheriidae were both previously identified as monobaramins (Wood 2016a), but here are recognized as holobaramins. Our present results also recognize two holobaramins within the Cingulata: Dasypodidae and Glyptodontinae. Previously, Wood (2008b) tentatively proposed that the entire Cingulata might have been a holobaramin, but these results suggest otherwise. DISCUSSION Our results substantially expand the available database of baraminology studies. Wood (2016a) previously identified 70 holobaramins identified in studies of 153 taxonomic groups. Our results expand the total number of taxonomic groups studied to 215 with 125 putative holobaramins identified. Within the non-hominin, non-cetacean mammals, we expand the putative holobaramins from 10 to 64. This remains far fewer than the total number of proposed mammal baramins. Assuming that the taxonomic family is roughly equivalent to the holobaramin, McKenna and Bell (1997) list 347 mammal families, of which 64 putative holobaramins is only 18.4%. Our results agree closely with the mammal ark kind estimations of Lightner (2012). Lightner lists only extant mammals, of which 30 of our holobaramins overlap taxonomically with 30 of her ark kinds. In 28 cases, our holobaramin matches roughly equivalently with her ark kinds, but in three cases, they differ. Our analysis of lemurs identified Indriidae and Palaeopropithecidae as a holobaramin, but Lightner recognized only Indriidae. This could be merely a result of Lightner’s exclusion of extinct taxa. In the other two cases, we found holobaramins that appeared to be taxonomically more restricted than Lightner’s ark kinds. First, our study of the pigs, Suidae, identified the family as the holobaramin with putative discontinuity observed between the suids and the peccaries (Tayassuidae). In contrast, Lightner included both pigs and peccaries in a single ark kind. Lightner also included Thompson and Wood ◀ A survey of Cenozic mammal baramins ▶ 2018 ICC 218