Hard evidence from soft fossil eggs

Kear, Benjamin P.

doi:10.1038/d41586-020-01732-8

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Some of these studies have also reconstructed ancestral states for these traits – discretized in some cases – and identified correlates that influenced these evolutionary patterns (Attard & Portugal, 2021; D'Alba et al, 2021; Legendre & Clarke, 2021; Legendre, Rubilar‐Rogers, Musser, et al, 2020; McClelland et al, 2021; Norell et al, 2020; Portugal et al, 2014; Stein et al, 2019; Tanaka et al, 2015). These studies have initiated what is perhaps the most interesting and controversial debate in this new field of quantitative eggshell research (Lindgren & Kear, 2020): what was the structure of the ancestral eggshell in dinosaurs, archosaurs, and reptiles as a whole? How do we assess potential biases in the preservation of fossil eggs and extant microstructure and function?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The diverse terminology of reptile eggshell microstructure and its effect on phylogenetic comparative analyses

2022

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Reptile eggshell ensures water and gas exchange during incubation and plays a key role in reproductive success. The diversity of reptilian incubation and life history strategies has led to many clade-specific structural adaptations of their eggshell, which have been studied in extant taxa (i.e. birds, crocodilians, turtles, and lepidosaurs). Most studies on non-avian eggshells were performed over 30 years ago and categorized reptile eggshells into two main types: "hard" and "soft" -sometimes with a third intermediate category, "semi-rigid." In recent years, however, debate over the evolution of eggshell structure of major reptile clades has revealed how definitions of hard and soft eggshells influence inferred deep-time evolutionary patterns. Here, we

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