Morphospaces of functionally analogous traits show ecological separation between birds and pterosaurs.

ABSTRACT: Birds originated and radiated in the presence of another group of flying vertebrates, the pterosaurs. Opinion is divided as to whether birds competitively displaced pterosaurs from small-body size niches or whether the two groups coexisted with little competition. Previous studies of Mesozoic birds and pterosaurs compared measurements of homologous limb bones to test these hypotheses. However, these characters probably reflect differing ancestries rather than ecologies. Here, competition and ecological separation were tested for using multivariate analyses of functionally equivalent morphological characters. As well as using characters from the fore- and hindlimbs, these analyses also included measurements of the lower jaw. The results of this study indicate that pterosaurs had relatively

SUBMITTER: Chan NR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5666097 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature