The P ermian and T riassic were key time intervals in the history of life on E arth. Both
periods are marked by a series of biotic crises including the most catastrophic of such …

Ray‐finned fishes (A ctinopterygii) constitute approximately half of all living vertebrate
species. A stable hypothesis of relationships among major modern lineages has emerged …

Dating the tree of life is a core endeavor in evolutionary biology. Rates of evolution are
fundamental to nearly every evolutionary model and process. Rates need dates. There is …

Fishes include more than half of all living animals with backbones, but large‐scale
palaeobiological patterns in this assemblage have not received the same attention as those …

Diversity of feeding mechanisms is a hallmark of reef fishes, but the history of this variation is
not fully understood. Here, we explore the emergence and proliferation of a biting mode of …

One of the central goals in paleoecology is to understand the nature and consequences of
biotic interactions. In marine systems, it has been argued that one of the major steps in the …

Coprolites from the Rhaetian bone beds in south-west England can be assigned to
crustaceans and fishes. Here, we report crustacean microcoprolites, including …

In the last 15 years, the discovery of several new actinopterygian fish faunas from the Early
and Middle Triassic of the Tethys, cast new light on the timing, speed and range of their …

Abstract† Pycnodontiformes was a successful lineage of primarily marine fishes that broadly
diversified during the Mesozoic. They possessed a wide variety of body shapes and were …

The hypothesis of escalation asserts that enemies—competitors, predators, and pathogens—
drive much of adaptive evolution. In a critical review of methods for testing this hypothesis, I …