The long-controversial theory of punctuated equilibrium (PE) asserts that speciation causes
rapid evolution against a backdrop of stasis. PE is currently undergoing a resurgence driven …

The detection of evolutionary shifts in trait evolution from extant taxa is motivated by the
study of convergent evolution, or to correlate shifts in traits with habitat changes or with …

Since Darwin, scientists have looked to the fossil record with the hope of using it to
document how the phenotypes of species change over substantial periods of time. How best …

Previous analyses of evolutionary patterns, or modes, in fossil lineages have focused
overwhelmingly on three simple models: stasis, random walks, and directional evolution …

Recent years have witnessed a steady increase in reports of fossilized nervous tissues
among Cambrian total-group euarthropods, which allow reconstructing the early …

Implied weighting, a method for phylogenetic inference that actively seeks to downweight
supposed homoplasy, has in recent years begun to be widely utilized in palaeontological …

Systematists and evolutionary biologists have widely adopted Procrustes-based geometric
morphometrics for measuring size and shape in biology. Many structures, and in fact most …

Biologists would be mistaken if they relegated living fossils to paleontological inquiry or
assumed that the concept is dead. It is now used to describe entities ranging from viruses to …

The fish clade Pelagiaria, which includes tunas as its most famous members, evolved
remarkable morphological and ecological variety in a setting not generally considered …

Analyses of morphological disparity can incorporate living and fossil taxa to facilitate the
exploration of how phenotypic variation changes through time. However, taphonomic …