Solenodons and venomous shrews diverged from a common ancestor more than 70 million years ago.
Notes on verification
Confirmed by peer-reviewed PNAS study (Casewell et al. 2019) and independently corroborated by a separate genomic study (Grigorev et al. 2018) and multiple secondary sources, all consistent with a divergence estimate over 70 million years ago.
Sources
- Unravelling the venomous bite of an endangered mammal | ScienceDaily (sciencedaily.com)
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1906117116 (pnas.org)
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31772017/ (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6926037/ (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6009670/ (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)