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Taxonomic identification bias does not drive patterns of abundance and diversity in theropod dinosaurs
The ability of palaeontologists to correctly diagnose and classify new fossil species from incomplete morphological data is fundamental to our understanding of evolution. Different parts of the vertebrate skeleton have different likelihoods of fossil preservation and varying amounts of taxonomic inf...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8278044/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34256583 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0168 |
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author | Cashmore, Daniel D. Butler, Richard J. Maidment, Susannah C. R. |
author_facet | Cashmore, Daniel D. Butler, Richard J. Maidment, Susannah C. R. |
author_sort | Cashmore, Daniel D. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The ability of palaeontologists to correctly diagnose and classify new fossil species from incomplete morphological data is fundamental to our understanding of evolution. Different parts of the vertebrate skeleton have different likelihoods of fossil preservation and varying amounts of taxonomic information, which could bias our interpretations of fossil material. Substantial previous research has focused on the diversity and macroevolution of non-avian theropod dinosaurs. Theropods provide a rich dataset for analysis of the interactions between taxonomic diagnosability and fossil preservation. We use specimen data and formal taxonomic diagnoses to create a new metric, the Likelihood of Diagnosis, which quantifies the diagnostic likelihood of fossil species in relation to bone preservation potential. We use this to assess whether a taxonomic identification bias impacts the non-avian theropod fossil record. We find that the patterns of differential species abundance and clade diversity are not a consequence of their relative diagnosability. Although there are other factors that bias the theropod fossil record that are not investigated here, our results suggest that patterns of relative abundance and diversity for theropods might be more representative of Mesozoic ecology than often considered. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8278044 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82780442021-11-10 Taxonomic identification bias does not drive patterns of abundance and diversity in theropod dinosaurs Cashmore, Daniel D. Butler, Richard J. Maidment, Susannah C. R. Biol Lett Palaeontology The ability of palaeontologists to correctly diagnose and classify new fossil species from incomplete morphological data is fundamental to our understanding of evolution. Different parts of the vertebrate skeleton have different likelihoods of fossil preservation and varying amounts of taxonomic information, which could bias our interpretations of fossil material. Substantial previous research has focused on the diversity and macroevolution of non-avian theropod dinosaurs. Theropods provide a rich dataset for analysis of the interactions between taxonomic diagnosability and fossil preservation. We use specimen data and formal taxonomic diagnoses to create a new metric, the Likelihood of Diagnosis, which quantifies the diagnostic likelihood of fossil species in relation to bone preservation potential. We use this to assess whether a taxonomic identification bias impacts the non-avian theropod fossil record. We find that the patterns of differential species abundance and clade diversity are not a consequence of their relative diagnosability. Although there are other factors that bias the theropod fossil record that are not investigated here, our results suggest that patterns of relative abundance and diversity for theropods might be more representative of Mesozoic ecology than often considered. The Royal Society 2021-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8278044/ /pubmed/34256583 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0168 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Palaeontology Cashmore, Daniel D. Butler, Richard J. Maidment, Susannah C. R. Taxonomic identification bias does not drive patterns of abundance and diversity in theropod dinosaurs |
title | Taxonomic identification bias does not drive patterns of abundance and diversity in theropod dinosaurs |
title_full | Taxonomic identification bias does not drive patterns of abundance and diversity in theropod dinosaurs |
title_fullStr | Taxonomic identification bias does not drive patterns of abundance and diversity in theropod dinosaurs |
title_full_unstemmed | Taxonomic identification bias does not drive patterns of abundance and diversity in theropod dinosaurs |
title_short | Taxonomic identification bias does not drive patterns of abundance and diversity in theropod dinosaurs |
title_sort | taxonomic identification bias does not drive patterns of abundance and diversity in theropod dinosaurs |
topic | Palaeontology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8278044/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34256583 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0168 |
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