Transformation and diversification in early mammal evolution
@article{Luo2007TransformationAD, title={Transformation and diversification in early mammal evolution}, author={Zhe‐Xi Luo}, journal={Nature}, year={2007}, volume={450}, pages={1011-1019} }
Evolution of the earliest mammals shows successive episodes of diversification. Lineage-splitting in Mesozoic mammals is coupled with many independent evolutionary experiments and ecological specializations. Classic scenarios of mammalian morphological evolution tend to posit an orderly acquisition of key evolutionary innovations leading to adaptive diversification, but newly discovered fossils show that evolution of such key characters as the middle ear and the tribosphenic teeth is far more…
429 Citations
Untangling the Multiple Ecological Radiations of Early Mammals.
- Environmental Science, BiologyTrends in ecology & evolution
- 2019
Developmental Patterns in Mesozoic Evolution of Mammal Ears
- Biology
- 2011
By extrapolating the developmental morphogenesis of genetic studies into the early mammal fossil record, evolution of the middle ear in early mammals provides an integrated case study of how development has impacted, mechanistically, the transformation of a major structural complex in evolution.
Adaptive radiation of multituberculate mammals before the extinction of dinosaurs
- Environmental Science, GeographyNature
- 2012
It is shown that in arguably the most evolutionarily successful clade of Mesozoic mammals, the Multituberculata, an adaptive radiation began at least 20 million years before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and continued across the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary.
Little evidence for enhanced phenotypic evolution in early teleosts relative to their living fossil sister group
- Biology, Environmental ScienceProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- 2016
Quantifying evolutionary rate and capacity for innovation in size and shape for the first 160 million y (Permian–Early Cretaceous) of evolution in neopterygian fishes finds that early teleosts do not show enhanced phenotypic evolution relative to holosteans, belying the living fossil reputation of their extant representatives.
Mammal disparity decreases during the Cretaceous angiosperm radiation
- Geography, Environmental ScienceProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- 2013
It is concluded that during the mid-Cretaceous, the period of rapid angiosperm radiation, mammals experienced both a decrease in morphological disparity and a functional shift in dietary morphology that were probably related to changing ecosystems.
Evidence for a Mid-Jurassic Adaptive Radiation in Mammals
- Environmental Science, GeographyCurrent Biology
- 2015
Evolutionary development in basal mammaliaforms as revealed by a docodontan
- Biology, Environmental ScienceScience
- 2015
It is argued that these morphogenetic mechanisms ofmodern mammals were operating before the rise of modern mammals, driving the morphological disparity in the earliest mammaliaform diversification.
Cenozoic Biological Evolution (by Colin Groves)
- Biology, Geography
- 2016
Comparative morphology and DNA analysis agree chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans, followed by gorillas, then orangutans and then gibbons, and most molecular clock calculations indicate that the human and chimpanzee lineages separated some 6 million years ago.
Modern Data on the Origin and Early Radiation of Mammals
- Biology, GeographyBiology Bulletin
- 2019
New paleontological and embryological data on the morphogenesis of the auditory ossicles demonstrate parallel developments of the definitive mammal middle ear in the placentals, marsupials, and monotremes, as well as the independent origins of a number of early groups.
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 121 REFERENCES
Molecular evidence for the early divergence of placental mammals.
- Geography, BiologyBioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology
- 1999
The adaptive diversification of placental mammals may have required the demise of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, but it occurred in lineages that had a long prior history of independent existence.
An Early Cretaceous Tribosphenic Mammal and Metatherian Evolution
- Geography, Environmental ScienceScience
- 2003
New data from this fossil support the view that Asia was likely the center for the diversification of the earliest metatherians and eutherians during the Early Cretaceous.
The delayed rise of present-day mammals
- Geography, Environmental ScienceNature
- 2007
The results show that the phylogenetic ‘fuses’ leading to the explosion of extant placental orders are not only very much longer than suspected previously, but also challenge the hypothesis that the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event had a major, direct influence on the diversification of today’s mammals.
Evolutionary and preservational constraints on origins of biologic groups: divergence times of eutherian mammals.
- Geography, Environmental ScienceScience
- 1999
Some molecular clock estimates of divergence times of taxonomic groups undergoing evolutionary radiation are much older than the groups' first observed fossil record. Mathematical models of branching…
A Late Jurassic Digging Mammal and Early Mammalian Diversification
- Geography, Environmental ScienceScience
- 2005
Parsimony analysis suggests that this fossil represents a separate basal mammalian lineage with some dental and vertebral convergences to those of modern xenarthran placentals, and reveals a previously unknown ecomorph of early mammals.
A New Mammaliaform from the Early Jurassic and Evolution of Mammalian Characteristics
- Biology, GeographyScience
- 2001
A fossil from the Early Jurassic represents a new lineage of mammaliaforms, the extinct groups more closely related to the living mammals than to nonmammaliaform cynodonts, and shows that several key mammalian evolutionary innovations in the ear region, the temporomandibular joint, and the brain vault evolved incrementally through mammaliaform evolution and long before the differentiation of the living mammal groups.
Placental mammal diversification and the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary
- Biology, GeographyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- 2003
The largest available molecular data set for placental mammals is investigated, which includes segments of 19 nuclear and three mitochondrial genes for representatives of all extant placental orders and permits simultaneous constraints from the fossil record and allows rates of molecular evolution to vary on different branches of a phylogenetic tree.
A Swimming Mammaliaform from the Middle Jurassic and Ecomorphological Diversification of Early Mammals
- Geography, Environmental ScienceScience
- 2006
This fossil demonstrates that some mammaliaforms, or proximal relatives to modern mammals, developed diverse locomotory and feeding adaptations and were ecomorphologically different from the majority of generalized small terrestrial Mesozoic mammalian insectivores.
An exceptionally preserved Lower Cretaceous ecosystem
- Geography, Environmental ScienceNature
- 2003
Findings include feathered theropod dinosaurs and early birds, which provide additional, indisputable support for the dinosaurian ancestry of birds, and much new evidence on the evolution of feathers and flight.
Quantitative Analysis of the Timing of the Origin and Diversification of Extant Placental Orders
- Geography, GeologyJournal of Mammalian Evolution
- 2004
Although the fossil record is incomplete, it appears adequate to reject the hypothesis that orders of placentals began to diversify before the K/T boundary; thus, early Tertiary ordinal diversification is real.