Protungulatum Donnae

From the NYT at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/science/common-ancestor-of-mammals-plucked-from-obscurity.html?_r=0

Note the use of "anticipates" in "the animal had several anatomical characteristics for live births that anticipated all placental mammals and led to some 5,400 living species, from shrews to elephants, bats to whales, cats to dogs and, not least, humans."

Structural similarity, yes -- but anticipates? Are we witness to correlation being conflated with causation?

Let's allow our scientists to explore possibilties and see how well hypotheses hold up to scrutiny. Let's avoid attempting to insert a cube into the coin slot.