Definition of "Afrotheria"

Golden moles and tenrecs are therefore more closely related to aardvarks and elephants than they are to shrews, moles, and hedgehogs. Because this African clade is well supported both from a statistical and congruence perspective but is not currently recognized taxonomically, we propose the superordinal name Afrotheria.

1998, Michael J. Stanhope et al., "Molecular Evidence for Multiple Origins of Insectivora and for a New Order of Endemic African Insectivore Mammals", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, volume 95, page 9971

The basal split is between Afrotheria and other placentals, at about 103 million years, and may be accounted for by the separation of South America and Africa in the Cretaceous.

2001, William J. Murphy et al., “Resolution of the Early Placental Mammal Radiation Using Bayesian Phylogenetics”, in Science, volume 294 (in English), page 2348