Pedomorphosis in the ancestry of marsupial mammals

Within mammals, different reproductive strategies (e.g., egg laying, live birth of extremely underdeveloped young, and live birth of well-developed young) have been linked to divergent evolutionary histories. How and when developmental variation across mammals arose is unclear. While egg laying is unquestionably considered the ancestral state for all mammals, many long-standing biases treat the extreme underdevel-oped state of marsupial young as the ancestral state for therian mammals (clade including both marsupials and placentals), with the well-developed young of placentals often considered the derived mode of devel-opment. Here, we quantify mammalian cranial morphological development and estimate ancestral patterns of cranial shape development using geometric morphometric analysis of the largest comparative ontoge-netic dataset of mammals to date (165 specimens, 22 species). We identify a conserved region of cranial morphospace for fetal specimens, after which cranial morphology diversified through ontogeny in a cone -shaped pattern. This cone-shaped pattern of development distinctively reflected the upper half of the developmental hourglass model. Moreover, cranial morphological variation was found to be significantly associated with the level of development (position on the altricial-precocial spectrum) exhibited at birth. Estimation of ancestral state allometry (size-related shape change) reconstructs marsupials as pedomor-phic relative to the ancestral therian mammal. In contrast, the estimated allometries for the ancestral placental and ancestral therian were indistinguishable. Thus, from our results, we hypothesize that placental mammal cranial development most closely reflects that of the ancestral therian mammal, while marsupial cranial development represents a more derived mode of mammalian development, in stark contrast to many interpretations of mammalian evolution.

Automated summary

Through studying the development of mammalian cranial morphology, it was found that the cranial shape during fetal stage follows a cone-shaped pattern, reflecting the developmental process. The variation in cranial morphology is significantly associated with the level of development at birth. It is hypothesized that placental mammal cranial development closely resembles that of the ancestral therian mammal, while marsupial cranial development represents a more derived mode of mammalian development.