Still slow, but even steadier: an update on the evolution of turtle cranial disparity interpolating shapes along branches.

ABSTRACT: In a previous study, we estimated the cranial disparity of turtles (Testudinata) through time using geometric morphometric data from both terminal taxa and hypothetical ancestors to compensate for temporal gaps in the fossil record. While this method yielded reasonable results for the Mesozoic and the early Cenozoic, we found a large drop in cranial disparity for the Miocene, for which we found no correlation with known environmental changes or extinction events. Instead, we speculated that the Miocene dip was a result of poor sampling of fossils or ancestors in this time bin. To countervail this problem, we here updated our original dataset and interpolated changes of shape along the branch lengths and compared them with the previous data. We furthermore explored the impact of topological

SUBMITTER: Foth C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5717657 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature