Ben Creisler
Recent Mesozoic papers not yet mentioned
MÃlina A. Celik and Matthew J. Phillips (2020)
Conflict Resolution for Mesozoic Mammals: Reconciling Phylogenetic Incongruence Among Anatomical Regions.
Frontiers in Genetics 11: 0651
doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.00651
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2020.00651/full
The evolutionary history of Mesozoic mammaliaformes is well studied. Although the backbone of their phylogeny is well resolved, the placement of ecologically specialized groups has remained uncertain. Functional and developmental covariation has long been identified as an important source of phylogenetic error, yet combining incongruent morphological characters altogether is currently a common practice when reconstructing phylogenetic relationships. Ignoring incongruence may inflate the confidence in reconstructing relationships, particularly for the placement of highly derived and ecologically specialized taxa, such as among australosphenidans (particularly, crown monotremes), haramiyidans, and multituberculates. The alternative placement of these highly derived clades can alter the taxonomic constituency and temporal origin of the mammalian crown group. Based on prior hypotheses and correlated homoplasy analyses, we identified cheek teeth and shoulder girdle character complexes as having a high potential to introduce phylogenetic error. We showed that incongruence among mandibulodental, cranial, and postcranial anatomical partitions for the placement of the australosphenidans, haramiyids, and multituberculates could largely be explained by apparently non-phylogenetic covariance from cheek teeth and shoulder girdle characters. Excluding these character complexes brought agreement between anatomical regions and improved the confidence in tree topology. These results emphasize the importance of considering and ameliorating major sources of bias in morphological data, and we anticipate that these will be valuable for confidently integrating morphological and molecular data in phylogenetic and dating analyses.
=======
Rafel Matamales-Andreu, Oriol Oms, Ãngel Galobart & Josep Fortuny (2020)
Middle-Upper Triassic marine vertebrates of Mallorca (Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean).
Historical Biology (advance online publication)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2020.1810682
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2020.1810682
During the Triassic, many groups of predatory marine reptiles appeared and diversified. On Mallorca, fossils of marine reptiles have been found in Muschelkalk (Anisian-Ladinian) and Keuper (Carnian-Norian) facies. Here we describe an anterior caudal vertebra of a basal ichthyosauriform similar to Grippidia (Reptilia: Ichthyosauriformes) from the Ladinian carbonate ramps of the Muschelkalk of Mallorca, which fills a biogeographic gap for the group, hitherto only known from the eastern and western margins of Panthalassa. The most plausible hypothesis to explain the fact that the Mallorcan specimen is younger than all the other related species described so far is supported by a rather isolated condition of the carbonate ramps surrounding eastern Iberia during the Anisian, which might point to a relict character of the Mallorcan species, representing the youngest record of basal ichthyosauriforms to date. Moreover, an epiphysis of an indeterminate reptile and four vertebrae assigned to Nothosaurus sp. (Reptilia: Eosauropterygia) from the Keuper sabkhat provide a new record of the latter genus on Mallorca, which falls within its known distribution area. Therefore, the present work provides an exhaustive review of all the marine vertebrate fossils found so far in the Middle-Upper Triassic of Mallorca, some of them with remarkable palaeobiogeographical implications.
======
=======
Rafel Matamales-Andreu, Oriol Oms, Ãngel Galobart & Josep Fortuny (2020)
Middle-Upper Triassic marine vertebrates of Mallorca (Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean).
Historical Biology (advance online publication)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2020.1810682
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2020.1810682
During the Triassic, many groups of predatory marine reptiles appeared and diversified. On Mallorca, fossils of marine reptiles have been found in Muschelkalk (Anisian-Ladinian) and Keuper (Carnian-Norian) facies. Here we describe an anterior caudal vertebra of a basal ichthyosauriform similar to Grippidia (Reptilia: Ichthyosauriformes) from the Ladinian carbonate ramps of the Muschelkalk of Mallorca, which fills a biogeographic gap for the group, hitherto only known from the eastern and western margins of Panthalassa. The most plausible hypothesis to explain the fact that the Mallorcan specimen is younger than all the other related species described so far is supported by a rather isolated condition of the carbonate ramps surrounding eastern Iberia during the Anisian, which might point to a relict character of the Mallorcan species, representing the youngest record of basal ichthyosauriforms to date. Moreover, an epiphysis of an indeterminate reptile and four vertebrae assigned to Nothosaurus sp. (Reptilia: Eosauropterygia) from the Keuper sabkhat provide a new record of the latter genus on Mallorca, which falls within its known distribution area. Therefore, the present work provides an exhaustive review of all the marine vertebrate fossils found so far in the Middle-Upper Triassic of Mallorca, some of them with remarkable palaeobiogeographical implications.
======