Fossils and living taxa agree on patterns of body mass evolution: a case study with Afrotheria.

ABSTRACT: Most of life is extinct, so incorporating some fossil evidence into analyses of macroevolution is typically seen as necessary to understand the diversification of life and patterns of morphological evolution. Here we test the effects of inclusion of fossils in a study of the body size evolution of afrotherian mammals, a clade that includes the elephants, sea cows and elephant shrews. We find that the inclusion of fossil tips has little impact on analyses of body mass evolution; from a small ancestral size (approx. 100 g), there is a shift in rate and an increase in mass leading to the larger-bodied Paenungulata and Tubulidentata, regardless of whether fossils are included or excluded from analyses. For Afrotheria, the inclusion of fossils and morphological character data affect phylogeneti

SUBMITTER: Puttick MN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4707753 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature