Studies of the biostratigraphy and palaeoecology of fossil vertebrate assemblages require large samples of accurately identified specimens. Such analyses can be hampered by the inability to assign isolated and worn remains to specific taxa. Entoptychine gophers are a diverse group of burrowing rodents found in Oligo‐Miocene deposits of the western United States. In both entoptychines and their extant relatives the geomyines, diagnostic characters of the occlusal surface of the teeth are modified with wear, making difficult the identification of many isolated fossil teeth. We use geometric morphometrics to test the hypothesis that tooth shape informs taxonomic affinities and expected levels of morphological variation across gopher taxa. We also incorporate data from microcomputer tomography to investigate changes in occlusal surface shape through wear within individuals. Our analyses demonstrate the usefulness of our approach in identifying extant geomyines to the genus, subgenus and species levels, and fossil entoptychines to the genus and, in some cases, the species level. Our results cast doubt on the validity of some species within Entoptychus and suggest future revisions to entoptychine taxonomy. The amounts of morphological divergence observed among fossil and extant genera are similar. Fossil species do not differ greatly from extant ones in that regard either. Further work evaluating the morphological variation within and across entoptychine species, including unworn teeth and osteological material, will allow revised analyses of the biostratigraphy and palaeoecology of important Oligo‐Miocene mammalian assemblages of the western United States and help to infer the phylogenetic relationships and evolution of gophers.
This study aimed to examine the current evidence in the medical literature on health disparities in the pediatric population. A bibliometric analysis of published research focused on health disparities in pediatric patients was conducted to analyze publication trends. A search of the Scopus database was conducted using keywords that were determined to be appropriate by the authors. This analysis helps determine which pediatric subspecialties may be lacking in health disparity research. A total of 2,380 publications from 1979 to 2021 met the inclusion criteria using the keywords “pediatric health disparities.” The number of articles published increased over the observation period, with 679 published between 2020-2021. When grouped by subspecialty, the majority of articles were associated with general pediatrics, followed by oncology, cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, neurology, pulmonology, and urology. When organized by health disparity risk factor or population, socioeconomics was the most common followed by race, urban, gender, rural, mental disability, physical disability, gender identity, religion and sexual orientation. The United States published more articles than any other country. The National Institute of Health has funded the majority of pediatric health disparities research. Pediatrics was found to be the leading journal of pediatric health disparity research. Research on pediatric health disparities is most frequently published in the United States, and is most focused on socioeconomics in a primary care setting. There is a large gap of research conducted in pediatric subspecialties, and on health disparities such as religion, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity.
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