Of course not, but it does suggest that LTR's are potentially able to cause significant changes in expression patterns of neighboring genes:
The number of described cases in which retroelement sequences confer useful traits to the host is growing. Retropositions can therefore be considered as a major pacemaker of the evolution that continues to change our genomes. In particular HERV [human endogenous retrovirus] elements could interact with human genome through (i) expression of retroviral genes, (ii) human genome loci rearrangement following the retroposition of the HERVs or (iii) the capacity of LTRs [long terminal repeats that are common to ERVs] to regulate nearby genes. A plethora of solitary LTRs comprises a variety of transcriptional regulatory elements, such as promoters, enhancers, hormone-responsive elements, and polyadenylation signals. Therefore the LTRs are potentially able to cause significant changes in expression patterns of neighboring genes.
The point I have made is that it is equally plausible that LTRs are of importance for some genomic purposes, but because we simply don't everything that they are doing in an organs, what their role was in the past, or how important their involvement is in genome functioning, the improbability of their presumed random coincidental insertion at identical locations of two different mammalian species is not necessarily smoking gun proof of common descent. After all, what would you say if the same ERV at the same location were found in two species that are not believed to have shared a recent common ancestor? Would you say that common descent had been falsified? I think not.
Cordially,
Retroviruses aren't simply retrotransposons. Most also have a coding region for an envelope protein. You also have to assume incorporation of the same retrovirus with the same envelope protein in the same place in independent events: and bear in mind retroviruses mutate far faster than their hosts. In fact, we do see evidence of incorporation of new insertions of some of the retroviruses by reinfection events (there was a paper in PNAS last year on this) and they don't go into the same site. There is even one element (K103) that most humans have, but that some sub-Saharan Africans have lost. That would tend to argue against functional significance.
Another problem is that the HERVs seem to have been incorporated a long time ago, and we've been slowly losing them. If they have a functional role or confer some advantange, then why were they only incorporated in a single burst, and why do they seem to be lost over time? Why are they apparently descended from only a small number of clades?