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At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
PubMed1993

Homologies in the fossil record: the middle ear as a test case.

This paper examines the middle ear of fossil living animals in terms of the homologies which have been drawn between its parts in different vertebrate groups. Seven homologies are considered: 1, the middle ear cavity/spiracular pouch; 2, the stapes/hyomandibula; 3, the stapedial/hyomandibular processes; 4 the tympanic membrane; 5, the otic notch; 6, the fenestra ovalis; 7, and the stapedial/hyomandibular foramen. The reasons leading to assessments of homology are reviewed. Homologies 1 and 2, based largely on embryological evidence, are fairly robust, though there are arguments about the details. Homologies 3, 4 and 5 stem from ideas about early tetrapod evolution, and were influenced by contingent factors including the order and time of discovery of early fossil taxa, and perceptions of their phylogeny which resulted from this. They were also influenced by ideas of the evolution of terrestriality among tetrapods. Most of the conceptions have been overturned in recent years by new fossil discoveries and new ways of looking at old data. Homology 6 has been little considered. One possible hypothesis, placed in a strictly 'archetypal' theoretical framework has been ignored but deserves consideration on other grounds. Homology 7 depends on how tetrapods are characterised, not a question which has posed difficulties until recently, but which is likely to with the discovery of intermediate fossil forms.

Animals↗
PubMed2000

The baryon halo of the milky way: A fossil record of its formation

Astronomers believe that the baryon (stellar) halo of the Milky Way retains a fossil imprint of how it was formed. But a vast literature shows that the struggle to interpret the observations within a consistent framework continues. The evidence indicates that the halo has built up through a process of accretion and merging over billions of years, which is still going on at a low level. Future satellite missions to derive three-dimensional space motions and heavy element (metal) abundances for a billion stars will disentangle the existing web and elucidate how galaxies like our own came into existence.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

Error in estimation of rate and time inferred from the early amniote fossil record and avian molecular clocks.

The best reconstructions of the history of life will use both molecular time estimates and fossil data. Errors in molecular rate estimation typically are unaccounted for and no attempts have been made to quantify this uncertainty comprehensively. Here, focus is primarily on fossil calibration error because this error is least well understood and nearly universally disregarded. Our quantification of errors in the synapsid-diapsid calibration illustrates that although some error can derive from geological dating of sedimentary rocks, the absence of good stem fossils makes phylogenetic error the most critical. We therefore propose the use of calibration ages that are based on the first undisputed synapsid and diapsid. This approach yields minimum age estimates and standard errors of 306.1 +/- 8.5 MYR for the divergence leading to birds and mammals. Because this upper bound overlaps with the recent use of 310 MYR, we do not support the notion that several metazoan divergence times are significantly overestimated because of serious miscalibration (sensuLee 1999). However, the propagation of relevant errors reduces the statistical significance of the pre-K-T boundary diversification of many bird lineages despite retaining similar point time estimates. Our results demand renewed investigation into suitable loci and fossil calibrations for constructing evolutionary timescales.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Was Australopithecus anamensis ancestral to A. afarensis? A case of anagenesis in the hominin fossil record.

We tested the hypothesis that early Pliocene Australopithecus anamensis was ancestral to A. afarensis by conducting a phylogenetic analysis of four temporally successive fossil samples assigned to these species (from earliest to latest: Kanapoi, Allia Bay, Laetoli, Hadar) using polarized character-state data from 20 morphological characters of the dentition and jaws. If the hypothesis that A. anamensis is ancestral to A. afarensis is true, then character-state changes between the temporally ordered site-samples should be congruent with hypothesized polarity transformations based on outgroup (African great ape) conditions. The most parsimonious reconstruction of character-state evolution suggests that each of the hominin OTUs shares apomorphies only with geologically younger OTUs, as predicted by the hypothesis of ancestry (tree length=31; Consistency Index=0.903). This concordance of stratigraphic and character-state data supports the idea that the A. anamensis and A. afarensis samples represent parts of an anagenetically evolving lineage, or evolutionary species. Each site-sample appears to capture a different point along this evolutionary trajectory. We discuss the implications of this conclusion for the taxonomy and adaptive evolution of these early-middle Pliocene hominins.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Patterns of tooth crown size and shape variation in great apes and humans and species recognition in the hominid fossil record.

It has been suggested that patterns of craniodental variation in living hominids (Gorilla, Homo, Pan, and Pongo) may be useful for evaluating variation in fossil hominid assemblages. Using this approach, a fossil sample exhibiting a pattern of variation that deviates from one shared among living taxa would be regarded as taxonomically heterogeneous. Here we examine patterns of tooth crown size and shape variation in great apes and humans to determine 1) if these taxa share a pattern of dental variation, and 2) if such a pattern can reliably discriminate between samples that contain single species and those that contain multiple species. We use parametric and nonparametric correlation methods to establish the degree of pattern similarity among taxa, and randomization tests to assess their statistical significance. The results of this study show that extant hominids do not share a pattern of dental size variation, and thus these taxa cannot be used to generate expectations for patterns of size variation in fossil hominid species. The hominines (Gorilla, Homo, and Pan) do share a pattern of shape variation in the mandibular dentition; however, Pongo is distinct, and thus it is unclear which, if either, pattern should be expected in fossil hominids. Moreover, in this case, most combined-species samples exhibit patterns of shape variation that are similar to those for single hominine species samples. Thus, although a common pattern of shape variation is present in the mandibular dentition, it is not useful for recognizing taxonomically mixed paleontological samples.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Old World fossil record of modern-type hummingbirds.

I report on tiny skeletons of stem-group hummingbirds from the early Oligocene of Germany that are of essentially modern appearance and exhibit morphological specializations toward nectarivory and hovering flight. These are the oldest fossils of modern-type hummingbirds, which had not previously been reported from the Old World. The findings demonstrate that early hummingbird evolution was not restricted to the New World. They further suggest that bird-flower coevolution dates back to the early Oligocene and open another view on the origin of ornithophily in Old World plants.

Americas↗
PubMed2003

Molecular fossil record of elevated methane levels in late Pleistocene coastal waters.

Accumulating evidence suggests that methane has been released episodically from hydrates trapped in sea floor sediments during many intervals of rapid climate warming. Here we show that sediments from the Santa Barbara Basin deposited during warm intervals in the last glacial period contain molecular fossils that are diagnostic of aerobic and anaerobic methanotrophs. Sediment intervals with high abundances of these compounds indicate episodes of vigorous methanotrophic activity in methane-laden water masses. Signals for anaerobic methanotrophy in 44,100-year-old sediment are evidence for particularly intense methane emissions and suggest that the basin's methane cycle can profoundly affect oxygen budgets in the water column.

Aerobiosis↗
PubMed2004

Biophysical constraints on the origin of leaves inferred from the fossil record.

The molecular tool kit for producing flat-bladed photosynthetic structures evolved in marine and terrestrial plants during the middle Paleozoic, but it took a further 20 million years before leaves suddenly spread throughout land floras. This delay has long been difficult to explain, given the apparent advantage of leaves for photosynthetic primary production. Theory and experiments predict that exceptionally high atmospheric CO2 levels in the middle Paleozoic delayed the origin of leaves by restricting stomatal development. This would have limited evaporative cooling, leading to lethal overheating of leaves absorbing large quantities of solar energy. Here we test the central prediction of this argument with a morphometric analysis of 300 plant fossils from major European collections. We show a 25-fold enlargement of leaf blades in two phylogenetically independent clades as atmospheric CO2 levels fell during the late Paleozoic. Furthermore, preliminary data suggest that the first abrupt increase in leaf size was accompanied by an 8-fold rise in stomatal density. These evolutionary patterns support the relaxation of biophysical constraints on leaf area predicted by theory and point to a significant role for CO2 in plant evolution.

Atmosphere↗
PubMed2006

Molecular trees of trypanosomes incongruent with fossil records of hosts.

Molecular trees of trypanosomes have confirmed conventionally accepted genera, but often produce topologies that are incongruent with knowledge of the evolution, systematics, and biogeography of hosts and vectors. These distorted topologies result largely from incorrect assumptions about molecular clocks. A host-based phylogenetic tree could serve as a broad outline against which the reasonability of molecular phylogenies could be evaluated. The host-based tree of trypanosomes presented here supports the " invertebrate first " hypothesis of trypanosome evolution, supports the monophyly of Trypanosomatidae, and indicates the digenetic lifestyle arose three times. An area cladogram of Leishmania supports origination in the Palaearctic during the Palaeocene.

Animals↗
PubMed2000

Overgrowth competition between clades: implications for interpretation of the fossil record and overgrowth indices.

Overgrowth interactions (2693 in total) were observed among three major groups (arguably clades) of bryozoans--cheilostomatids (57 species), ctenostomatids (3 species), and cyclostomatids (14 species). The bryozoans studied here occur in shallow water at high-temperate polar latitudes where they encrust hard substrata such as rock piles. The main study site was the intertidal and infralittoral zones of Kodiak Island, Alaska, but observations were also made in similar zones of South Georgia Island and the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. Cheilostomatids dominated the number of species, individuals, and interactions at all depths. Intraclade interactions formed 73.7% of the encounters for cheilostomatids, 1.6% for ctenostomatids, and 5.7% for cyclostomatids. The competitive ranking of the three clades was broadly ctenostomatids > cyclostomatids > cheilostomatids. Significantly, these results contradict all previous quantitative studies of bryozoan overgrowth, in which cheilostomatids are reported to overgrow cyclostomatids at a higher rate. From these studies and the literature, we calculated win indices to vary from 0 to 0.42 for living cyclostomatids, from 0.08 to 0.9 for living cheilostomatids, and from 0.25 to 0.75 for living ctenostomatids. The win indices of cyclostomatid and cheilostomatid clades show significantly more variation in living assemblages than in fossil assemblages. This disparity may be due to differential preservation (polar and subpolar assemblages last less than 4 years). The diversity was very high in terms of both species richness and interaction types (outcomes between competitor pairs). Comparison with the literature suggests the possibility that nearshore diversity of bryozoans may be bimodal (have two peaks) between high arctic and antarctic latitudes. Indices of success in overgrowth competition have been constructed in various ways. For cheilostomatids, the method of calculation had little influence on the ranking of representatives. In contrast, the apparent success of ctenostomatids and cyclostomatids varied hugely with how the index was calculated. This inconsistency is due to the use of very different strategies in overgrowth competition; among the two latter groups, many interactions involve tied outcomes.

Animals↗