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| 2. |
- Evans, Alistair R., et al.
(författare)
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The maximum rate of mammal evolution
- 2012
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 109:11, s. 4187-4190
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How fast can a mammal evolve from the size of a mouse to the size of an elephant? Achieving such a large transformation calls for major biological reorganization. Thus, the speed at which this occurs has important implications for extensive faunal changes, including adaptive radiations and recovery from mass extinctions. To quantify the pace of large-scale evolution we developed a metric, clade maximum rate, which represents the maximum evolutionary rate of a trait within a clade. We applied this metric to body mass evolution in mammals over the last 70 million years, during which multiple large evolutionary transitions occurred in oceans and on continents and islands. Our computations suggest that it took a minimum of 1.6, 5.1, and 10 million generations for terrestrial mammal mass to increase 100-, and 1,000-, and 5,000-fold, respectively. Values for whales were down to half the length (i.e., 1.1, 3, and 5 million generations), perhaps due to the reduced mechanical constraints of living in an aquatic environment. When differences in generation time are considered, we find an exponential increase in maximum mammal body mass during the 35 million years following the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event. Our results also indicate a basic asymmetry in macroevolution: very large decreases (such as extreme insular dwarfism) can happen at more than 10 times the rate of increases. Our findings allow more rigorous comparisons of microevolutionary and macroevolutionary patterns and processes.
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| 3. |
- Raia, P., et al.
(författare)
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Progress to extinction: increased specialisation causes the demise of animal clades
- 2016
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Animal clades tend to follow a predictable path of waxing and waning during their existence, regardless of their total species richness or geographic coverage. Clades begin small and undifferentiated, then expand to a peak in diversity and range, only to shift into a rarely broken decline towards extinction. While this trajectory is now well documented and broadly recognised, the reasons underlying it remain obscure. In particular, it is unknown why clade extinction is universal and occurs with such surprising regularity. Current explanations for paleontological extinctions call on the growing costs of biological interactions, geological accidents, evolutionary traps, and mass extinctions. While these are effective causes of extinction, they mainly apply to species, not clades. Although mass extinctions is the undeniable cause for the demise of a sizeable number of major taxa, we show here that clades escaping them go extinct because of the widespread tendency of evolution to produce increasingly specialised, sympatric, and geographically restricted species over time.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Žliobaitė, Indrė, et al.
(författare)
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The NOW Database of Fossil Mammals
- 2023
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Ingår i: Evolution of Cenozoic Land Mammal Faunas and Ecosystems: 25 years of the NOW database of fossil mammals. - : Springer. ; , s. 33-42
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- NOW (New and Old Worlds) is a global database of fossil mammal occurrences, currently containing around 68,000 locality-species entries. The database spans the last 66 million years, with its primary focus on the last 23 million years. Whereas the database contains records from all continents, the main focus and coverage of the database historically has been on Eurasia. The database includes primarily, but not exclusively, terrestrial mammals. It covers a large part of the currently known mammalian fossil record, focusing on classical and actively researched fossil localities. The database is managed in collaboration with an international advisory board of experts. Rather than a static archive, it emphasizes the continuous integration of new knowledge of the community, data curation, and consistency of scientific interpretations. The database records species occurrences at localities worldwide, as well as ecological characteristics of fossil species, geological contexts of localities and more. The NOW database is primarily used for two purposes: (1) queries about occurrences of particular taxa, their characteristics and properties of localities in the spirit of an encyclopedia; and (2) large scale research and quantitative analyses of evolutionary processes, patterns, reconstructing past environments, as well as interpreting evolutionary contexts. The data are fully open, no logging in or community membership is necessary for using the data for any purpose.
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| 8. |
- Fortelius, M., et al.
(författare)
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Preliminary analysis of taxonomic diversity, turnover and provinciality in a subsample of large land mammals from the later Miocene of western Eurasia.
- 1996
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Ingår i: Acta zoologica cracoviensia. ; 39, s. 167-178
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We have recently reviewed the later Miocene (MN 6-13; ca 15-5 Ma ago) primates, hipparions, rhinocerotids, suoids and carnivores of Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. This work is still unpublished and analyses are underway, but a preliminary indication of some coarse patterns is given here for the sample consisting of the groups listed above: 1) There is a clear-cut difference between western and Central Europe on one hand and the eastern Mediterranean on the other. This is especially clear for species richness, which shows a rising trend throughout the Vallesian and earlier Turolian for the eastern regions and a falling trend for the western ones. 2) The major drops in species richness occurred between MN 6 and MN 7, between MN 9 and MN 10, and between MN 12 and MN 13. Of these, the "mid-Vallesian crisis" (MN 9-10) seems to have been entirely absent in the eastern Mediterranean, where species richness rose sharply during this interval. Correspondingly, the drop in MN 12-13, associated with the Messinian crisis, was predominantly an eastern phenomenon. 3) Taxon free analysis of body size and ecomorphology strongly supports the view that a diachronous opening up of the landscape from east to west took place in western Eurasia during the Astaracian and Vallesian. We postulate that the difference seen in faunal dynamics between east and west reflects habitat-related effects of this diachrony in response to the same global event of rapid physical change. 4) The early Turolian (MN 11) was characterized by high diversity and high faunal similarity, which both decreased during the later Turolian and ended with the Messinian crisis. 5) Despite highly uniform diversity and turnover patterns throughout the interval, western and Central Europe developed distinct ecological differences from about MN 10 onwards. These differences may have been associated with the persistence of closed habitats in Central Europe.
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| 10. |
- Fortelius, Mikael, et al.
(författare)
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The Origin and Early History of NOW as It Happened
- 2023
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Ingår i: Evolution of Cenozoic Land Mammal Faunas and Ecosystems: 25 years of the NOW database of fossil mammals.. - : Springer. ; , s. 7-32
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The NOW database of fossil mammals came to be through a confluence of several initiatives spanning multiple decades. The first public version of NOW database was released in 1996 and the first Advisory Board was established the year after. Originally, NOW stood for Neogene of the Old World but with the gradual expansion of the database the acronym was eventually reassigned to stand for New and Old Worlds. The structure of what would become NOW was originally cloned from the ETE database of the Smithsonian Institution and the first NOW version accessible over the internet was a node of the ETE database. The first standalone, online version of NOW was launched in 2005 and the first formal steering group was established in 2009. During its existence, NOW has been funded, directly or indirectly, by several organizations but fundamentally it has always been an unfunded community effort, dependent on voluntary work by the participants.
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| 11. |
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| 12. |
- Smith, Felisa A, et al.
(författare)
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The evolution of maximum body size of terrestrial mammals
- 2010
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 330:6008, s. 1216-1219
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The extinction of dinosaurs at the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary was the seminal event that opened the door for the subsequent diversification of terrestrial mammals. Our compilation of maximum body size at the ordinal level by sub-epoch shows a near-exponential increase after the K/Pg. On each continent, the maximum size of mammals leveled off after 40 million years ago and thereafter remained approximately constant. There was remarkable congruence in the rate, trajectory, and upper limit across continents, orders, and trophic guilds, despite differences in geological and climatic history, turnover of lineages, and ecological variation. Our analysis suggests that although the primary driver for the evolution of giant mammals was diversification to fill ecological niches, environmental temperature and land area may have ultimately constrained the maximum size achieved.
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| 13. |
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