Viverra, the original viverrid, enters the LRT with hesperocyonids

No problem.
In the large reptile tree (LRT, 2215 taxa) hesperocyonids are derived viverrids. According to Wikipedia (Hesperocyon page), “looked more like a civet or a small raccoon. Its body and tail were long and flexible, while its limbs were weak and short.”

Okay, that’s the overall morphology. That’s how one should scored a taxon. Unfortunately Wikipedia authors then double back and “Pull a Larry Martin” when they report, “Still, the build of its ossicles and distribution of its teeth showed it was a canid.”

According to the LRT the tiny inner ear bones and the teeth of Hesperocyon are convergent with wolves + dogs (canids, genus Canis in the LRT) because they represent small parts of the whole. The LRT scores for traits from snout to tail, from teeth to phalanges.

Traditional paleontology keeps ‘Pulling a Larry Martin’ like this
by reporting a few traits as more important than hundreds of scored traits. Worse yet, traditional paleontologists have been trusting deep time genomics, which nests civets with cats and splits the clade Carnivora into Feliformes and Caniformes.

By contrast the LRT tests 236 multi-state characters to recover a hypothesis of interrelationships and document convergence and reversal. In the LRT no traits are key traits. All traits are on the table. Distinct from genomics, in the LRT cats and dogs are closely related and both are highly derived members of the Carnivora. Cvets and hesperocyonids are both primitive, not closely related to cats or dogs.

Figure 1. Skull, skeleton of Viverra tangalunga along with an invivo image.

Viverra tangalunga
(Gray 1832) is the extant Malayan civet. This omnivore is primarily terrestrial.

A rat-sized fossil taxon from the Eocene,
Viverravus minutus (Fig 2) , enters the LRT today alongside Civettictis civetta (Fig 2).

Figure 2. Rat-sized Eocene Viverravus entered the LRT alongside Civettictis, the civet.

Civettictis civetta
Schreber 1776; snout rump length = 80cm) is the extant civet (Fig 2). Here it nests between Nandinia and Genetta alongiside Vivveravus from the Eocene.

Viverravus minutus
(Wortman 1901, genus: Marsh 1872, Eocene, Fig 2) is a smaller, older sister to Civvettictis in the LRT.

Figure 3. Subset of the LRT focused on basal Carnivora, the clade Vivveridae, according to Gray 1821.

Gray 1821 defined Vivveridae
to include the genera Viverra, Genetta, Herpestes, and Suricata (Fig 3). Others modified the taxon list of this clade. That’s not appropriate. Stick with original definition unless it is a junior synonym for an earlier clade.

References
Gray JE 1832. On the family of Viverridae and its generic sub-divisions, with an enumeration of the species of several new ones. Proceedings of the Committee of Science and Correspondence of the Zoological Society of London. 2: 63–68.
Marsh OC 1872. Preliminary description of new Tertiary mammals. Part I. American Journal of Science 4(20):122-128.
Wortman JL 1901. Studies of Eocene Mammalia in the Marsh Collection, Peabody Museum. The American Journal of Science, series 4 12:193-206.

wiki/Viverridae
wiki/Viverravus
wiki/Viverra tangalunga
wiki/Hesperocyon