Cautionary tales on the use of proxies to estimate body size and form of extinct animals.

ABSTRACT: Body size is of fundamental importance to our understanding of extinct organisms. Physiology, ecology and life history are all strongly influenced by body size and shape, which ultimately determine how a species interacts with its environment. Reconstruction of body size and form in extinct animals provides insight into the dynamics underlying community composition and faunal turnover in past ecosystems and broad macroevolutionary trends. Many extinct animals are known only from incomplete remains, necessitating the use of anatomical proxies to reconstruct body size and form. Numerous limitations affecting the appropriateness of these proxies are often overlooked, leading to controversy and downstream inaccuracies in studies for which reconstructions represent key input data. In this persp

SUBMITTER: Gayford JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11368419 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature