aardvarks
After the flood

Aardvark, Orycteropus afer, in South Africa (CC0, Kelly Abram)

The aardvark, Orycteropus afer, is the sole surviving representative of an entire mammalian order (Tubulidentata) as well as a very distinctive baraminic lineage. The Tubulidentata earned that name because of the shape of their teeth—they are born with incisors and canines, which are quickly shed and never regrow, and keep only pre-molars and molars as they mature. Their rootless teeth lack enamel, and are made up of hundreds of small ‘tubular pulp cavities’ held together in hexagonal columns by cementum. These grow continuously, as they are worn down by abrasion (Davit-Béal et al. 2009). (An ant-and-termite diet is not particularly abrasive, but they do ingest sand and rock as they dig into mounds; some of that remains in their stomachs to aid digestion.) All fossil aardvarks are known to have this form of dentition.

While the secular model places aardvarks within the Afrotheria (along with sirenians, tenrecs, elephant shrews, elephants, etc.), from a creation perspective there is little evidence to suggest that aardvarks have common ancestry with any other living mammal species. On the evolutionary side, the argument relies primarily on a few molecular studies—one such noted that the AQP2 gene in the elephant, hyrax, aardvark, and elephant shrew each demonstrates a combination of three specific amino acid replacements, which is argued to support a phylogenetic relationship (Madsen et al. 1997). For creationists, this is less than compelling evidence, as we already recognize that there are hierarchical patterns in creation—but that these reflect complex designed systems with shared ecomorphological requirements rather than (universal) common ancestry.

Despite such arguments, evolutionists have had difficulty specifically placing aardvarks within an afrotherian phylogeny. While distinctly tubulidentate fossils are known from Miocene and younger deposits (“already highly specialized”, Averianov and Lopatin 2016), there is not much fossil evidence to connect them to the other afrotherians. A number of early Eocene-Oligocene genera originally suggested as tubulidentates have since been recognized to belong to other lineages (Tabuce et al. 2008). While putative transitional forms are lacking, one African Eocene-Oligocene order, the carnivorous Ptolemaiida, comprised of the families Ptolemaiidae and Kelbidae (Simons and Bown 1995; Cote et al. 2007), shares a few skull and dental characteristics with the aardvarks. Any similarities, though, are “intriguing” rather than convincing (Cote et al. 2007). Unproven as yet, such a relationship would be compatible with both evolutionary and creation models. Given the highly specialized craniodental morphology demonstrated by even the earliest fossil aardvarks, it is possible that the ‘aardvark’ phenotype reflects the physical appearance of the Ark Kind. However, we cannot overlook the possibility that this is a post-Flood adaptation.

Aardvark, Orycteropus afer, in South Africa (CC0, Dave Brown)

Lehmann’s (2009) review of the order suggested four legitimate genera from the Miocene to the present (Myorycteropus, Leptorycteropus, Amphiorhycteropus, and Orycteropus), while Pickford (2019) described a new genus, Eteketoni, from Early Miocene Uganda (now the oldest recognized aardvark). Lehmann (2009) noted that the Early Miocene Myorycteropus was too specialized to be ancestral to the later genera, so there are likely less derived fossil aardvarks yet to be uncovered. (For the creation model, we would expect a less derived aardvark ancestor, Ark Kind or later, as progenitor to these recognized genera, somewhere in the early Cenozoic prior to Miocene deposits.) Aardvarks have primarily been African, with dispersion by different genera throughout the continent at different periods. (Modern aardvarks are extirpated from northern Africa, but were present during the Plio-Pleistocene). An early Miocene radiation carried aardvarks to Asia (Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Russia, Ukraine), and Europe (Greece, Italy, Moldova) (PBDB; Roussiakis et al. 2022). These did not survive past the Pliocene. The earliest fossil of the modern aardvark, O. afar, comes from the early Pliocene (Pickford 2005).