Transformation and diversification in early mammal evolution

Zhe-Xi Luo ()
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Zhe-Xi Luo: Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA

Nature, 2007, vol. 450, issue 7172, 1011-1019

Abstract: The descent of mammals The evolution of mammals is often told as a linear story involving the steady acquisition of key characters developed from the ancestral reptilian state — such as a middle ear, evolved from the jaw joint, and the 'tribosphenic' (crushing and biting) molar from the simple pointed teeth of reptiles. But as Zhe-Xi Luo shows in a Review Article, a host of recently discovered fossils alters that view radically. Mammalian evolution, far from taking a direct path, is a complex branching network with a number of dead ends: mammalian features evolved repeatedly in separate lineages, and were sometimes lost.

Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1038/nature06277

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