Phylogenetic Systematics of the North American Fossil Caninae (Carnivora: Canidae)

Tedford, Richard H.; Wang, Xiaoming; Taylor, Beryl E.

doi:10.1206/574.1

Cited by 220 publications

(391 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…The 'expert tree' was digitized from the monographs of Wang & Tedford [12][13][14] using TREEROGUE [15], with judgement calls resolved in favour of preserving the authors' depiction of divergence times (electronic supplementary material). Morphological characters and dates came from Slater [16,17].…”

Section: Methods (A) Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Suitable fossil datasets are rare, but one for which a strong argument (table 1) can be made is the fossil Canidae (dog family; [11]). Monographs on the three Canidae subfamilies Hesperocyoninae [12], Borophaginae [13] and Caninae [14] combined cladistic analysis of discrete characters with expert knowledge of stratigraphy and continuous characters to produce species-level phylogenies dated to approximately 1-2 myr resolution. We use Canidae to compare date estimates made under mechanistic (BDSS/FBD) and non-mechanistic (uniform tree prior) models to expert opinion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Inferring node dates from tip dates in fossil Canidae: the importance of tree priors

Matzke

Wright

2016

Biol. Lett.

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An invited contribution to the special feature 'Putting fossils in trees: combining morphology, time, and molecules to estimate phylogenies and divergence times'. Tip-dating methods are becoming popular alternatives to traditional node calibration approaches for building time-scaled phylogenetic trees, but questions remain about their application to empirical datasets. We compared the performance of the most popular methods against a dated tree of fossil Canidae derived from previously published monographs. Using a canid morphology dataset, we performed tip-dating using BEAST v. 2.1.3 and MRBAYES v. 3.2.5. We find that for key nodes (Canis, approx. 3.2 Ma, Caninae approx. 11.7 Ma) a non-mechanistic model using a uniform tree prior produces estimates that are unrealistically old (27.5, 38.9 Ma). Mechanistic models (incorporating lineage birth, death and sampling rates) estimate ages that are closely in line with prior research. We provide a discussion of these two families of models (mechanistic versus non-mechanistic) and their applicability to fossil datasets.

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Section: Methods (A) Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inferring node dates from tip dates in fossil Canidae: the importance of tree priors

Matzke

Wright

2016

Biol. Lett.

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“…The elbow-joint shape in the 139 specimens (92 living specimens distributed among the families Felidae, Hyaenidae, Viverridae, Mustelidae and Canidae of the order Carnivora (Table 1) and 47 fossil specimens of the family Canidae including representatives of the three subfamilies, Hesperocyoninaew, Borophaginaew and Caninae [17][18][19] (Table 3) was recovered by digitizing six landmarks in 2D on the anterior surface of the humerus distal epiphysis [20][21][22] from high-resolution digital images (Fig. 1a).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The classification of fossil species into one of the three predatory groups was inferred according to their proximity to group centroids of the three predatory groups of extant carnivorans with SPSS v. 19.…”

Section: U O N a Lp In U S C An Is M Es Om El As Ca Nis Ad Us Tus Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here we use the impressive and well-documented fossil record of North American canids [17][18][19] to test if their inferred locomotor/ predatory behaviour was influenced by Cenozoic environmental change towards open habitats, as has been documented in the contemporaneous large herbivores 8,11,14 . We test for direct association between predatory behaviour and environmental events, rather than an 'arms-race' hypothesis between predators and prey.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Habitat changes and changing predatory habits in North American fossil canids

et al. 2015

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The spread of open grassy habitats and the evolution of long-legged herbivorous mammals with high-crowned cheek teeth have been viewed as an example of coevolution. Previous studies indicate that specialized predatory techniques in carnivores do not correlate with the spread of open habitats in North America. Here we analyse new data on elbow-joint shape for North American canids over the past B37 million years and show that incipiently specialized species first appeared along with the initial spread of open habitats in the late Oligocene. Elbow-joint morphologies indicative of the behavior of modern pounce-pursuit predators emerged by the late Miocene coincident with a shift in plant communities from C 3 to C 4 grasses. Finally, pursuit canids first emerged during the Pleistocene. Our results indicate that climate change and its impact on vegetation and habitat structure can be critical for the emergence of ecological innovations and can alter the direction of lineage evolution.

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Beyond the Sniffer: Frontal Sinuses in Carnivora

Curtis

Valkenburgh

2014

The Anatomical Record

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Paranasal sinuses are some of the most poorly understood features of mammalian cranial anatomy. They are highly variable in presence and form among species, but their function is not well understood. The bestsupported explanations for the function of sinuses is that they opportunistically fill mechanically unnecessary space, but that in some cases, sinuses in combination with the configuration of the frontal bone may improve skull performance by increasing skull strength and dissipating stresses more evenly. We used CT technology to investigate patterns in frontal sinus size and shape disparity among three families of carnivores: Canidae, Felidae, and Hyaenidae. We provide some of the first quantitative data on sinus morphology for these three families, and employ a novel method to quantify the relationship between three-dimensional sinus shape and skull shape. As expected, frontal sinus size and shape were more strongly correlated with frontal bone size and shape than with the morphology of the skull as a whole. However, sinus morphology was also related to allometric differences among families that are linked to biomechanical function. Our results support the hypothesis that frontal sinuses most often opportunistically fill space that is mechanically unnecessary, and they can facilitate cranial shape changes that reduce stress during feeding. Moreover, we suggest that the ability to form frontal sinuses allows species to modify skull function without compromising the performance of more functionally constrained regions such as the nasal chamber (heat/water conservation, olfaction), and braincase (housing the brain and sensory structures).

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Phylogenetic Systematics of the North American Fossil Caninae (Carnivora: Canidae)

Cited by 220 publications

References 94 publications

Inferring node dates from tip dates in fossil Canidae: the importance of tree priors

Inferring node dates from tip dates in fossil Canidae: the importance of tree priors

Habitat changes and changing predatory habits in North American fossil canids

Beyond the Sniffer: Frontal Sinuses in Carnivora

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