A biased fossil record can preserve reliable phylogenetic signal
A biased fossil record can preserve reliable phylogenetic signal
The fossil record is notoriously imperfect and biased in representation, hindering our ability to place fossil specimens into an evolutionary context. For groups with fossil records mostly consisting of disarticulated parts (e.g., vertebrates, echinoderms, plants), the limited morphological information preserved sparks concerns about whether fossils retain reliable evidence of phylogenetic relationships and lends uncertainty to analyses of diversification, paleobiogeography, and biostratigraphy in Earth's history. To address whether a fragmentary past can be trusted, we need to assess whether incompleteness affects the quality of phylogenetic information contained in fossil data. Herein, we characterize skeletal incompleteness bias in a large dataset (6585 specimens; 14,417 skeletal elements) of fossil squamates (lizards, snakes, amphisbaenians, and mosasaurs). We show that jaws + palatal bones, vertebrae, and ribs appear more frequently in the fossil record than other parts of the skeleton. This incomplete anatomical representation in the fossil record is biased against regions of the skeleton that contain the majority of morphological phylogenetic characters used to assess squamate evolutionary relationships. Despite this bias, parsimony- and model-based comparative analyses indicate that the most frequently occurring parts of the skeleton in the fossil record retain similar levels of phylogenetic signal as parts of the skeleton that are rarer. These results demonstrate that the biased squamate fossil record contains reliable phylogenetic information and support our ability to place incomplete fossils in the tree of life.
480-495
Woolley, C. Henrik
55db5b86-d431-4d24-91cb-73f2548dfade
Thompson, Jeffrey R.
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Wu, Yun-Hsin
114af3fc-06bc-4c3a-a424-3f35de673dd5
Bottjer, David J.
bfaed1cd-cbf2-4cae-9812-5dfdf44b3f0b
Smith, Nathan D.
66ae64a1-91a1-419b-87c6-5f8b1a753ecd
6 August 2022
Woolley, C. Henrik
55db5b86-d431-4d24-91cb-73f2548dfade
Thompson, Jeffrey R.
d2c9b7bb-3e33-4918-97c8-0c36e7af30a4
Wu, Yun-Hsin
114af3fc-06bc-4c3a-a424-3f35de673dd5
Bottjer, David J.
bfaed1cd-cbf2-4cae-9812-5dfdf44b3f0b
Smith, Nathan D.
66ae64a1-91a1-419b-87c6-5f8b1a753ecd
Woolley, C. Henrik, Thompson, Jeffrey R., Wu, Yun-Hsin, Bottjer, David J. and Smith, Nathan D.
(2022)
A biased fossil record can preserve reliable phylogenetic signal.
Paleobiology, 48 (3), .
(doi:10.1017/pab.2021.45).
Abstract
The fossil record is notoriously imperfect and biased in representation, hindering our ability to place fossil specimens into an evolutionary context. For groups with fossil records mostly consisting of disarticulated parts (e.g., vertebrates, echinoderms, plants), the limited morphological information preserved sparks concerns about whether fossils retain reliable evidence of phylogenetic relationships and lends uncertainty to analyses of diversification, paleobiogeography, and biostratigraphy in Earth's history. To address whether a fragmentary past can be trusted, we need to assess whether incompleteness affects the quality of phylogenetic information contained in fossil data. Herein, we characterize skeletal incompleteness bias in a large dataset (6585 specimens; 14,417 skeletal elements) of fossil squamates (lizards, snakes, amphisbaenians, and mosasaurs). We show that jaws + palatal bones, vertebrae, and ribs appear more frequently in the fossil record than other parts of the skeleton. This incomplete anatomical representation in the fossil record is biased against regions of the skeleton that contain the majority of morphological phylogenetic characters used to assess squamate evolutionary relationships. Despite this bias, parsimony- and model-based comparative analyses indicate that the most frequently occurring parts of the skeleton in the fossil record retain similar levels of phylogenetic signal as parts of the skeleton that are rarer. These results demonstrate that the biased squamate fossil record contains reliable phylogenetic information and support our ability to place incomplete fossils in the tree of life.
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a-biased-fossil-record-can-preserve-reliable-phylogenetic-signal
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Accepted/In Press date: 6 December 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 28 January 2022
Published date: 6 August 2022
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
We would like to thank J. J. W. Sertich and K. Mackenzie in the Earth Sciences Vertebrate Paleontology collections at the Denver Museum of Natures & Science for access to specimens, collections resources and research opportunities. We are also grateful to D. Brinkman and J. A. Gauthier in the Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History for specimen access and thoughtful discussion. We would also like to thank C. Mehling in the Fossil Amphibians, Reptiles, and Birds Collections at the American Museum of Natural History for specimen access. Additionally, we would like to thank M. Walsh, S. McLeod, and B. Mertz at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County for digital specimen data access. We would also like to thank Paleobiology managing editor J. Kastigar for logistical support with revisions. Finally, we would like to thank Paleobiology editor C. K. Boyce, associate editor M. Friedman, an anonymous reviewer, and reviewer N. Brocklehurst for extremely helpful feedback and comments that greatly augmented the quality of this article. C.H.W. was supported by the Richard Estes Memorial Grant from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Grant from the American Museum of Natural History, as well as National Science Foundation EAR 1647841 and ANT 1341475 (to N.D.S.). J.R.T. was supported by a Royal Society Newton International Fellowship and a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Paleontological Society.
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Local EPrints ID: 473248
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/473248
ISSN: 0094-8373
PURE UUID: 5d5395f7-e88e-46d2-b3e7-103f73083826
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Date deposited: 12 Jan 2023 18:20
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 02:15
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Author:
C. Henrik Woolley
Author:
Jeffrey R. Thompson
Author:
Yun-Hsin Wu
Author:
David J. Bottjer
Author:
Nathan D. Smith
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