Rates of Evolution and the Notion of "Living Fossils"

Schöpf, Thomas J. M.

doi:10.1146/annurev.ea.12.050184.001333

Cited by 64 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 117 publications

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“…; red panda Mallick ). For example, humans could justifiably be considered to be living fossils under current taxonomy due to the extinction of ˜ 16 other species within Homo (Schopf ).…”

Section: Theoretical Problems With a ‘Living Fossil’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tuatara and a new morphometric dataset for Rhynchocephalia: Comments on Herrera‐Flores et al.

et al. 2018

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“…; red panda Mallick ). For example, humans could justifiably be considered to be living fossils under current taxonomy due to the extinction of ˜ 16 other species within Homo (Schopf ).…”

Section: Theoretical Problems With a ‘Living Fossil’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tuatara and a new morphometric dataset for Rhynchocephalia: Comments on Herrera‐Flores et al.

et al. 2018

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“…Perhaps this outcome is to be expected given that changes in morphology must be underwritten by changes in DNA (Schopf et al . 1975; Schopf 1984). Nonetheless, there is clearly a need for interface between molecular evolutionists and palaeontologists, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the use of molecular clocks (Reisz and Muller 2004; Benton and Donoghue 2007).…”

Section: Molecular Palaeobiology: the Evolutionary Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Molecular Palaeobiology

Peterson¹,

Summons

Donoghue

2007

Palaeontology

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For more than a generation, molecular biology has been used to approach palaeontological problems, and yet only recently have attempts been made to integrate research utilizing the geological and genomic records in uncovering evolutionary history. We codify this approach as Molecular Palaeobiology for which we provide a synthetic framework for studying the interplay among genotype, phenotype and the environment, within the context of deep time. We provide examples of existing studies where molecular and morphological data have been integrated to provide novel insights within each of these variables, and an account of a case study where each variable has been tackled to understand better a single macroevolutionary event: the diversification of metazoan phyla. We show that the promise of this approach extends well beyond research into the evolutionary history of animals and, in particular, we single out plant evolution as the single greatest opportunity waiting to be exploited by molecular palaeobiology. Although most of our examples consider how novel molecular data and techniques have breathed new life into long-standing palaeontological controversies, we argue that this asymmetry in the balance of molecular and morphological evidence is an artefact of the relative 'newness' of molecular data. In particular, palaeontological data provide unique and crucial roles in unravelling evolutionary history given that extinct taxa reveal patterns of character evolution invisible to molecular biology. Finally, we argue that palaeobiologists, rather than molecular biologists, are best placed to exploit the opportunity afforded by molecular palaeobiology, though this will require incorporating the techniques and approaches of molecular biology into their skill-set.

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“…Molecular and biochemical data, however, provide evidence for a different view of living fossil taxa. Morphological stasis neither requires nor implies the cessation of genetic or evolutionary change, including speciation, within a lineage (Avise et al, 1994;Nixon and Taylor, 1977;Schopf, 1984;Selander et al, 1970;Wake et al, 1983;Williams, 1984).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%