Details of its crown morphology indicate that it is a boreosphenidan, a member of the group that includes living marsupials and placental mammals.
[1] Two years later, Alexander Averianov, David Archibald, and Thomas Martin favored a placental interpretation in a paper in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, noting that the specimen was essentially similar to the zhelestid Lainodon.
UA 8699 lacks a cingulid (ridge) resembling a shelf on the lingual (inner) side, indicating that is not a member of Australosphenida (the proposed clade uniting monotremes and some ancient Gondwanan mammals, including the Jurassic Madagascan Ambondro); thus, it can be identified as representing Boreosphenida, which includes marsupials, placentals, and their extinct relatives.
There is a well-developed cingulid at the outer back margin (distobuccally), between the hypoconid (one of the main cusps) and the hypoconulid (a smaller cuspule).
He interpreted UA 8699 as evidence that marsupials must already have colonized the southern continents by the late Cretaceous, presumably having reached Madagascar through South America and Antarctica.
[1] Averianov, Archibald, and Martin instead placed UA 8699 in the context of faunal similarity and exchange between the late Cretaceous faunas of Europe and Africa, noting the presence of similar animals, such as snakes (Madtsoia) and sauropods (Lirainosaurus and Rapetosaurus), in the Cretaceous faunas of Madagascar and the Spanish locality Laño.