A radiation of arboreal basal eutherian mammals beginning in the Late Cretaceous of India

Goswami, Anjali; Prasad, G. V. R.; Upchurch, Paul; Boyer, Douglas; Seiffert, Erik R.; Verma, Omkar; Gheerbrant, Emmanuel; Flynn, John J.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1108723108

Cited by 90 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Four plesiadapiforms, one colugo, and new Purgatorius tarsal data were added to the character matrix of ref. 12, and new Purgatorius tarsal data were added to the character matrices of refs. 15 and 16.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cladistic analysis using maximum parsimony was performed in TNT (41) on three revised character matrices (12,15,16). Four plesiadapiforms, one colugo, and new Purgatorius tarsal data were added to the character matrix of ref.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All resulting MPTs were used to obtain a strict consensus, and, following the methods of ref. 12, the Pruned Trees function was used to identify the least stable taxa, which were removed using the Prune Taxa function if large polytomies were present. The Tree Filter function was used to delete longer trees and duplicate MPTs.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some researchers who have preferred to restrict the order Primates to the crown-clade (i.e., Euprimates) have also questioned the primate affinities of Purgatorius and other Paleogene plesiadapiforms (reputed stem primates) (e.g., refs 7 and 8). Furthermore, several recent phylogenetic analyses have not supported Purgatorius in Primates (9) or even in Placentalia (crown-clade eutherians) (10)(11)(12). New evidence supporting Purgatorius as the oldest plesiadapiform primate is derived from tarsal bones collected at the late Puercan (Pu3; ∼65 Mya) Garbani Channel fauna localities in Garfield County, northeastern Montana.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Oldest known euarchontan tarsals and affinities of Paleocene Purgatorius to Primates

Chester

Bloch

Boyer

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Earliest Paleocene Purgatorius often is regarded as the geologically oldest primate, but it has been known only from fossilized dentitions since it was first described half a century ago. The dentition of Purgatorius is more primitive than those of all known living and fossil primates, leading some researchers to suggest that it lies near the ancestry of all other primates; however, others have questioned its affinities to primates or even to placental mammals. Here we report the first (to our knowledge) nondental remains (tarsal bones) attributed to Purgatorius from the same earliest Paleocene deposits that have yielded numerous fossil dentitions of this poorly known mammal. Three independent phylogenetic analyses that incorporate new data from these fossils support primate affinities of Purgatorius among euarchontan mammals (primates, treeshrews, and colugos). Astragali and calcanei attributed to Purgatorius indicate a mobile ankle typical of arboreal euarchontan mammals generally and of Paleocene and Eocene plesiadapiforms specifically and provide the earliest fossil evidence of arboreality in primates and other euarchontan mammals. Postcranial specializations for arboreality in the earliest primates likely played a key role in the evolutionary success of this mammalian radiation in the Paleocene.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Oldest known euarchontan tarsals and affinities of Paleocene Purgatorius to Primates

Chester

Bloch

Boyer

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…For our analyses of the TE dataset, the above Mk model was implemented for the morphological partition, while for the sequence partition, an appropriate partitioning scheme and associated models for the sequence data were determined using PARTITIONFINDER [45]. Analyses were run using MRBAYES v. 3.2 [40]; all MCMC run settings and tests for stationarity are discussed in the electronic supplementary material, §5, and included in the MRBAYES data files.…”

Section: (G) Models and Phylogenetic Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ancient dates or accelerated rates? Morphological clocks and the antiquity of placental mammals

2014

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Analyses of a comprehensive morphological character matrix of mammals using 'relaxed' clock models (which simultaneously estimate topology, divergence dates and evolutionary rates), either alone or in combination with an 8.5 kb nuclear sequence dataset, retrieve implausibly ancient, Late JurassicEarly Cretaceous estimates for the initial diversification of Placentalia (crown-group Eutheria). These dates are much older than all recent molecular and palaeontological estimates. They are recovered using two very different clock models, and regardless of whether the tree topology is freely estimated or constrained using scaffolds to match the current consensus placental phylogeny. This raises the possibility that divergence dates have been overestimated in previous analyses that have applied such clock models to morphological and total evidence datasets. Enforcing additional age constraints on selected internal divergences results in only a slight reduction of the age of Placentalia. Constraining Placentalia to less than 93.8 Ma, congruent with recent molecular estimates, does not require major changes in morphological or molecular evolutionary rates. Even constraining Placentalia to less than 66 Ma to match the 'explosive' palaeontological model results in only a 10-to 20-fold increase in maximum evolutionary rate for morphology, and fivefold for molecules. The large discrepancies between clock-and fossil-based estimates for divergence dates might therefore be attributable to relatively small changes in evolutionary rates through time, although other explanations (such as overly simplistic models of morphological evolution) need to be investigated. Conversely, dates inferred using relaxed clock models (especially with discrete morphological data and MRBAYES) should be treated cautiously, as relatively minor deviations in rate patterns can generate large effects on estimated divergence dates.

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Angiosperm Radiation Theory

Sussman¹

2017

The International Encyclopedia of Primatology

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Fruiting trees in tropical forests depend for their existence on the animals that eat their fruit. Seeds falling below the parent plant are less likely to survive than those dispersed at a distance. Primates, along with birds and bats, are the most important dispersers of seeds in the tropics. Of course, this was not always the case, and the evolutionary histories of tropical rainforests and primates are intricately related. In fact, one might say they helped create one another through a long process of diffuse coevolution.

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A radiation of arboreal basal eutherian mammals beginning in the Late Cretaceous of India

Cited by 90 publications

References 51 publications

Oldest known euarchontan tarsals and affinities of Paleocene Purgatorius to Primates

Oldest known euarchontan tarsals and affinities of Paleocene Purgatorius to Primates

Ancient dates or accelerated rates? Morphological clocks and the antiquity of placental mammals

Angiosperm Radiation Theory

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