RD Marek - Journal of Morphology, 2023 - Wiley Online Library
The neck is a critical portion of the avian spine, one that works in tandem with the beak to act as a surrogate forelimb and allows birds to manipulate their surroundings despite the lack of …
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 …
The ecological origin of snakes remains amongst the most controversial topics in evolution, with three competing hypotheses: fossorial; marine; or terrestrial. Here we use a geometric …
Hox genes regulate regionalization of the axial skeleton in vertebrates,,,,,,, and changes in their expression have been proposed to be a fundamental mechanism driving the evolution …
A unique characteristic of mammals is a vertebral column with anatomically distinct regions, but when and how this trait evolved remains unknown. We reconstructed vertebral regions …
The incompleteness of the fossil record obscures the origin of many of the more derived clades of vertebrates. One such group is the Ichthyopterygia, a clade of obligatory marine …
The origin of the turtle shell has perplexed biologists for more than two centuries [1]. It was not until Odontochelys semitestacea [2] was discovered, however, that the fossil and …
Complexity, defined as the number of parts and their degree of differentiation, is a poorly explored aspect of macroevolutionary dynamics. The maximum anatomical complexity of …
Mammals show a very low level of variation in vertebral count, particularly in the neck. Phenotypes exhibited at various stages during the development of the axial skeleton may …