Modern Turtles Much Younger Than Thought?

Vincent submitted, created time 9 months 3 weeks (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

As reptiles go, turtles are old--no question. They evolved before snakes and crocodiles and preceded dinosaurs. But establishing when the common ancestor of modern turtles first appeared has recently become controversial. Now a new fossil is backing the idea that modern turtles evolved more recently than previously thought.

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Fossils, Molecules, Divergence Times, and the Origin of Lissamphibians

cappuccion submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.informaworld.com)

A review of the paleontological literature shows that the early dates of appearance of Lissamphibia recently inferred from molecular data do not favor an origin of extant amphibians from temnospondyls, contrary to recent claims. A supertree is assembled using new Mesquite modules that allow extinct taxa to be incorporated into a time-calibrated phylogeny with a user-defined geological time scale. The supertree incorporates 223 extinct species of lissamphibians and has a highly significant stratigraphic fit

Submit comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: Calibration point fossil record Lissamphibia molecular dating phylogenetics stratigraphic fit supertree