Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Biol Lett. 2010 Dec 23;6(6):830-3. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0371. Epub 2010 Jun 9.
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.
海龟的起源是系统学中最具争议的问题之一,目前有三种可行的假说:海龟是(i)鳄鱼-鸟类分支、(ii)蜥蜴-喙头蜥分支或(iii)主龙形类(由(i)和(ii)组成)的现存姐妹群。我们重新分析了最近将海龟与蜥蜴-喙头蜥分支联合起来的数据集,发现包括原始海龟 Proganochelys quenstedti 和“似爬行动物” Eunotosaurus africanus 在内,会导致单一的压倒性形态信号,表明海龟不属于主龙形类。这一结果反映了当长分支分离冠群分支时,过渡化石的重要性,并强调了使用化石来校准分子钟时,拓扑一致性的作用等尚未解决的问题。