期刊
BIOLOGY LETTERS
卷 6, 期 6, 页码 830-833出版社
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0371
关键词
turtle; Diapsida; molecular clock; transitional fossil; Eunotosaurus africanus; Odontochelys semitestacea
资金
- Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies ECOSAVE Center
- National Science Foundation
The origin of turtles is one of the most contentious issues in systematics with three currently viable hypotheses: turtles as the extant sister to (i) the crocodile-bird clade, (ii) the lizard-tuatara clade, or (iii) Diapsida (a clade composed of (i) and (ii)). We reanalysed a recent dataset that allied turtles with the lizard-tuatara clade and found that the inclusion of the stem turtle Proganochelys quenstedti and the 'parareptile' Eunotosaurus africanus results in a single overriding morphological signal, with turtles outside Diapsida. This result reflects the importance of transitional fossils when long branches separate crown clades, and highlights unexplored issues such as the role of topological congruence when using fossils to calibrate molecular clocks.
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