A new giant titanosaur sheds light on body mass evolution among sauropod dinosaurs

Carballido, José Luis; Pol, Diego; Otero, Alejandro; Cerda, Ignacio Alejandro; Salgado, Leonardo; Garrido, Alberto C.; Ramezani, Jahandar; Cúneo, N. Rubén; Krause, J. Marcelo

doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.1219

Cited by 109 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“… A robust body mass estimate around 70 tonnes was reported using multiple methods for a nearly‐complete skeleton of a related taxon, Patagotitan , shortly before publication of the current work (Carballido et al . ). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Cope's rule and the adaptive landscape of dinosaur body size evolution

et al. 2017

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The largest known dinosaurs weighed at least 20 million times as much as the smallest, indicating exceptional phenotypic divergence. Previous studies have focused on extreme giant sizes, tests of Cope's rule, and miniaturization on the line leading to birds. We use non-uniform macroevolutionary models based on Ornstein-Uhlenbeck and trend processes to unify these observations, asking: what patterns of evolutionary rates, directionality and constraint explain the diversification of dinosaur body mass? We find that dinosaur evolution is constrained by attraction to discrete body size optima that undergo rare, but abrupt, evolutionary shifts. This model explains both the rarity of multilineage directional trends, and the occurrence of abrupt directional excursions during the origins of groups such as tiny pygostylian birds and giant sauropods. Most expansion of trait space results from rare, constraint-breaking innovations in just a small number of lineages. These lineages shifted rapidly into novel regions of trait space, occasionally to small sizes, but most often to large or giant sizes. As with Cenozoic mammals, intermediate body sizes were typically attained only transiently by lineages on a trajectory from small to large size. This demonstrates that bimodality in the macroevolutionary adaptive landscape for land vertebrates has existed for more than 200 million years.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…; Carballido et al . ) in sauropods. This represents extraordinary phenotypic divergence from a Triassic ancestor living 140 million years earlier and weighing 10–30 kg (Sereno ; Benson et al .…”

Section: Abbreviationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cope's rule and the adaptive landscape of dinosaur body size evolution

et al. 2017

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“…Furthermore, Campione & Evans (2012) demonstrated a universal scaling relationship between proximal (stylopodial) limb bone circumferences and the body masses of terrestrial tetrapods. For instance, their equations, using both femur and humerus circumference, have been applied to estimate body mass of fossil dinosaurs (e.g., Benson et al 2014;Carballido et al, 2017). However, due to a historical neglect of crocodylomorph postcranial anatomy, especially for Mesozoic taxa (Godoy et al, 2016), relatively less information is available on this part of the skeleton.…”

Section: Proxy For Total Body Lengthmentioning

confidence: 99%

The multi-peak adaptive landscape of crocodylomorph body size evolution

Godoy

Benson

Bronzati

et al. 2018

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7Background: Little is known about the long-term patterns of body size evolution in 2 8Crocodylomorpha, the > 200-million-year-old group that includes living crocodylians 2 9and their extinct relatives. Extant crocodylians are mostly large-bodied (3-7 m) 3 0 predators. However, extinct crocodylomorphs exhibit a wider range of phenotypes, and 3 1 many of the earliest taxa were much smaller (< 1.2 m). This suggests a pattern of size 3 2 increase through time that could be caused by multi-lineage evolutionary trends of size 3 3 increase or by selective extinction of small-bodied species. In this study, we characterise 3 4 patterns of crocodylomorph body size evolution using a model fitting-approach (with 3 5 cranial measurements serving as proxies). We also estimate body size disparity through 3 6 time and quantitatively test hypotheses of biotic and abiotic factors as potential drivers 3 7 of crocodylomorph body size evolution. 3 8 3 9Results: Crocodylomorphs reached an early peak in body size disparity during the Late 4 0 Jurassic, and underwent essentially continually decreases in disparity since then. A 4 1 multi-peak Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model outperforms all other evolutionary models fitted 4 2 to our data (including both uniform and non-uniform), indicating that the 4 3 macroevolutionary dynamics of crocodylomorph body size are better described within 4 4

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“…, ; Carballido et al . ). The neuroanatomy of sauropods also deviates from other dinosaurs, with sauropods exhibiting the lowest encephalization quotients among all dinosaurs (Hopson ).…”

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confidence: 97%

Rapid transformation in the braincase of sauropod dinosaurs: integrated evolution of the braincase and neck in early sauropods?

2017

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Sauropod dinosaurs were quadrupedal herbivores with a highly specialized body plan that attained the largest masses of any terrestrial vertebrates. Recent discoveries have shown that key traits associated with sauropod gigantism appeared stepwise during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic in evolutionary ‘cascades’ of associated changes, in which a ‘head and neck’ cascade has been suggested as an important module. Here, we investigate the evolutionary transformation of the sauropodomorph braincase, using discrete anatomical characters, prompted by the reanalysis of a Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) sauropodiform braincase from England. Our analysis shows that sauropod braincases are highly distinct, and occupy a different region of morphospace than their evolutionary relatives. This resulted from anatomical transformations including a set of changes in the surface attachments of craniocervical musculature, which may indicate integrated evolution between neck elongation and transformation in braincase anatomy. Neck elongation in Late Triassic and Early or Middle Jurassic taxa is potentially associated with episodes of skull reduction, indicating that the ‘head and neck’ cascade was activated more than once in the evolutionary history of Sauropodomorpha. The re‐activation of this cascade in the Jurassic may have impacted on the differential survival of sauropodomorph lineages through the Early and Middle Jurassic.

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A new giant titanosaur sheds light on body mass evolution among sauropod dinosaurs

Cited by 109 publications

References 55 publications

Cope's rule and the adaptive landscape of dinosaur body size evolution

Cope's rule and the adaptive landscape of dinosaur body size evolution

The multi-peak adaptive landscape of crocodylomorph body size evolution

Rapid transformation in the braincase of sauropod dinosaurs: integrated evolution of the braincase and neck in early sauropods?

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