Crocodylian Head Width Allometry and Phylogenetic Prediction of Body Size in Extinct Crocodyliforms.

ABSTRACT: Body size and body-size shifts broadly impact life-history parameters of all animals, which has made accurate body-size estimates for extinct taxa an important component of understanding their paleobiology. Among extinct crocodylians and their precursors (e.g., suchians), several methods have been developed to predict body size from suites of hard-tissue proxies. Nevertheless, many have limited applications due to the disparity of some major suchian groups and biases in the fossil record. Here, we test the utility of head width (HW) as a broadly applicable body-size estimator in living and fossil suchians. We use a dataset of sexually mature male and female individuals (n = 76) from a comprehensive sample of extant suchian species encompassing nearly all known taxa (n = 22) t

SUBMITTER: O'Brien HD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7671145 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature