ORCID Profile
0000-0002-7050-7072
Current Organisation
University of Salford
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Palaeontology (incl. Palynology) | Phylogeny and Comparative Analysis | Geology | Stratigraphy (incl. Biostratigraphy and Sequence Stratigraphy) | Biogeography and Phylogeography | Evolutionary Biology
Documentation of Undescribed Flora and Fauna | Expanding Knowledge in the Earth Sciences | Ecosystem Adaptation to Climate Change | Effects of Climate Change and Variability on Australia (excl. Social Impacts) | Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences |
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-09-2030
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE05634
Abstract: Did the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event, by eliminating non-avian dinosaurs and most of the existing fauna, trigger the evolutionary radiation of present-day mammals? Here we construct, date and analyse a species-level phylogeny of nearly all extant Mammalia to bring a new perspective to this question. Our analyses of how extant lineages accumulated through time show that net per-lineage ersification rates barely changed across the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. Instead, these rates spiked significantly with the origins of the currently recognized placental superorders and orders approximately 93 million years ago, before falling and remaining low until accelerating again throughout the Eocene and Oligocene epochs. Our results show that the phylogenetic 'fuses' leading to the explosion of extant placental orders are not only very much longer than suspected previously, but also challenge the hypothesis that the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event had a major, direct influence on the ersification of today's mammals.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2010
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 03-11-2011
Abstract: Fossils of a marsupial mole (Marsupialia, Notoryctemorphia, Notoryctidae) are described from early Miocene deposits in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, northwestern Queensland, Australia. These represent the first unequivocal fossil record of the order Notoryctemorphia, the two living species of which are among the world's most specialized and bizarre mammals, but which are also convergent on certain fossorial placental mammals (most notably chrysochlorid golden moles). The fossil remains are genuinely ‘transitional', documenting an intermediate stage in the acquisition of a number of specializations and showing that one of these—the dental morphology known as zalambdodonty—was acquired via a different evolutionary pathway than in placentals. They, thus, document a clear case of evolutionary convergence (rather than parallelism) between only distantly related and geographically isolated mammalian lineages—marsupial moles on the island continent of Australia and placental moles on most other, at least intermittently connected continents. In contrast to earlier presumptions about a relationship between the highly specialized body form of the blind, earless, burrowing marsupial moles and desert habitats, it is now clear that archaic burrowing marsupial moles were adapted to and probably originated in wet forest palaeoenvironments, preadapting them to movement through drier soils in the xeric environments of Australia that developed during the Neogene.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 30-09-2022
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 26-03-2008
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2006
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2023
Publisher: Scandinavian University Press / Universitetsforlaget AS
Date: 2016
DOI: 10.1111/LET.12131
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 19-12-2006
Abstract: New Zealand (NZ) has long been upheld as the archetypical ex le of a land where the biota evolved without nonvolant terrestrial mammals. Their absence before human arrival is mysterious, because NZ was still attached to East Antarctica in the Early Cretaceous when a variety of terrestrial mammals occupied the adjacent Australian portion of Gondwana. Here we report discovery of a nonvolant mammal from Miocene (19–16 Ma) sediments of the Manuherikia Group near St Bathans (SB) in Central Otago, South Island, NZ. A partial relatively plesiomorphic femur and two autapomorphically specialized partial mandibles represent at least one mouse-sized mammal of unknown relationships. The material implies the existence of one or more ghost lineages, at least one of which (based on the relatively plesiomorphic partial femur) spanned the Middle Miocene to at least the Early Cretaceous, probably before the time of ergence of marsupials and placentals Ma. Its presence in NZ in the Middle Miocene and apparent absence from Australia and other adjacent landmasses at this time appear to reflect a Gondwanan vicariant event and imply persistence of emergent land during the Oligocene marine transgression of NZ. Nonvolant terrestrial mammals disappeared from NZ some time since the Middle Miocene, possibly because of late Neogene climatic cooling.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 17-07-2016
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 07-2008
DOI: 10.1666/06-124.1
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 02-02-2021
DOI: 10.1111/EVO.14163
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 15-05-2023
Abstract: Incorporating morphological data into modern phylogenies allows integration of fossil evidence, facilitating ergence dating and macroevolutionary inferences. Improvements in the phylogenetic utility of morphological data have been sought via Procrustes-based geometric morphometrics (GMM), but with mixed success and little clarity over what anatomical areas are most suitable. Here, we assess GMM-based phylogenetic reconstructions in a heavily s led source of discrete characters for mammalian phylogenetics—the basicranium—in 57 species of marsupial mammals, compared with the remainder of the cranium. We show less phylogenetic signal in the basicranium compared with a ‘Rest of Cranium’ partition, using erse metrics of phylogenetic signal ( K mult , phylogenetically aligned principal components analysis, comparisons of UPGMA/neighbour-joining arsimony trees and cophenetic distances to a reference phylogeny) for scaled, Procrustes-aligned landmarks and allometry-corrected residuals. Surprisingly, a similar pattern emerged from parsimony-based analyses of discrete cranial characters. The consistent results across methods suggest that easily computed metrics such as K mult can provide good guidance on phylogenetic information in a landmarking configuration. In addition, GMM data may be less informative for intricate but conservative anatomical regions such as the basicranium, while better—but not necessarily novel—phylogenetic information can be expected for broadly characterized shapes such as entire bones. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The mammalian skull: development, structure and function’.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 27-05-2016
DOI: 10.1038/SREP26911
Abstract: A new specimen of the bizarrely specialised Malleodectes mirabilis from middle Miocene deposits in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area provides the first and only information about the molar dentition of this strange group of extinct marsupials. Apart from striking autapomorphies such as the enormous P3, other dental features such as stylar cusp D being larger than B suggest it belongs in the Order Dasyuromorphia. Phylogenetic analysis of 62 craniodental characters places Malleodectes within Dasyuromorphia albeit with weak support and without indication of specific relationships to any of the three established families (Dasyuridae, Myrmecobiidae and Thylacinidae). Accordingly we have allocated Malleodectes to the new family, Malleodectidae. Some features suggest potential links to previously named dasyuromorphians from Riversleigh (e.g., Ganbulanyi ) but these are too poorly known to test this possibility. Although the original interpretation of a steeply declining molar row in Malleodectes can be rejected, it continues to seem likely that malleodectids specialised on snails but probably also consumed a wider range of prey items including small vertebrates. Whatever their actual diet, malleodectids appear to have filled a niche in Australia’s rainforests that has not been occupied by any other mammal group anywhere in the world from the Miocene onwards.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 24-09-2014
Publisher: CRC Press
Date: 06-01-2017
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 27-08-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-2008
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE07347
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-2022
DOI: 10.1002/SPP2.1475
Abstract: Giant wombats (defined here as ≥70 kg) are found in the genera Phascolonus , Ramsayia and perhaps Sedophascolomys . Ramsayia is currently the most poorly known, having been described from mandibular and cranial fragments. Here, we report the most complete cranial remains attributable to the genus, identified as R. magna . The specimen provides new insights into the anatomy of the species and evolutionary adaptations to gigantism in Vombatidae. We record parietal sinuses in a vombatid for the first time, an adaptation to increased skull size relative to the braincase. The presence of a prominent premaxillary spine may indicate that the species possessed a large, fleshy nose. Both features are convergent on other large‐bodied, non‐vombatid extinct megaherbivores of Australia such as Diprotodon optatum . We use the cranial remains to examine the phylogenetic relationships of giant wombats to other vombatids. Phylogenetic analysis using maximum parsimony and Bayesian inference indicates that Phascolomys , Ramsayia and Sedophascolomys form a clade, suggesting a single origin of gigantism within Vombatidae. This origin may be related to the exploitation of poor‐quality foods, and preceded extreme specializations observed in the cranial anatomy of the giant wombats. U‐series and combined U‐series and electron spin resonance (ESR) dating methods were applied to one fossil tooth. Age calculations systematically correlate the fossil remains to Marine Isotope Stage 5, and an age of c. 80 000 years can be proposed for this specimen. With only a single well‐dated occurrence for this taxon, it is currently impossible to determine when and why R. magna became extinct.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 23-04-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2009
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2006
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-2014
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 22-05-2014
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 07-12-2020
DOI: 10.1101/2020.12.06.410928
Abstract: Little is known about how the large brains of mammals are accommodated into the dazzling ersity of their skulls. It has been suggested that brain shape is influenced by relative brain size, that it evolves or develops according to extrinsic or intrinsic mechanical constraints, and that its shape can provide insights into its proportions and function. Here, we characterise the shape variation among 84 marsupial cranial endocasts of 57 species including fossils, using 3D geometric morphometrics and virtual dissections. Statistical shape analysis revealed four main patterns: over half of endocast shape variation ranges between elongate and straight to globular and inclined little allometric variation with respect to centroid size, and none for relative volume no association between locomotion and endocast shape limited association between endocast shape and previously published histological cortex volumes. Fossil species tend to have smaller cerebral hemispheres. We find ergent endocast shapes in closely related species and within species, and erse morphologies superimposed over the main variation. An evolutionarily and in idually malleable brain with a fundamental tendency to arrange into a spectrum of elongate-to-globular shapes – possibly mostly independent of brain function - may explain the accommodation of brains within the enormous ersity of mammalian skull form.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 19-03-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-2017
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 10-01-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-017-18403-W
Abstract: A new genus and species of fossil bat is described from New Zealand’s only pre-Pleistocene Cenozoic terrestrial fauna, the early Miocene St Bathans Fauna of Central Otago, South Island. Bayesian total evidence phylogenetic analysis places this new Southern Hemisphere taxon among the burrowing bats (mystacinids) of New Zealand and Australia, although its lower dentition also resembles Africa’s endemic sucker-footed bats (myzopodids). As the first new bat genus to be added to New Zealand’s fauna in more than 150 years, it provides new insight into the original ersity of chiropterans in Australasia. It also underscores the significant decline in morphological ersity that has taken place in the highly distinctive, semi-terrestrial bat family Mystacinidae since the Miocene. This bat was relatively large, with an estimated body mass of ~40 g, and its dentition suggests it had an omnivorous diet. Its striking dental autapomorphies, including development of a large hypocone, signal a shift of diet compared with other mystacinids, and may provide evidence of an adaptive radiation in feeding strategy in this group of noctilionoid bats.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 17-04-2023
Publisher: Museums Victoria
Date: 2016
Publisher: Museums Victoria
Date: 2016
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2009
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-12-2009
DOI: 10.1671/039.029.0412
Publisher: Museums Victoria
Date: 2016
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-01-2021
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Start Date: 2018
End Date: 03-2023
Amount: $347,126.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 03-2012
End Date: 11-2014
Amount: $375,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity