School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1RJ, UK.
School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1RJ, UK.
Curr Biol. 2014 Jan 20;24(2):R87-R95. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.11.063.
Dinosaurs arose in the early Triassic in the aftermath of the greatest mass extinction ever and became hugely successful in the Mesozoic. Their initial diversification is a classic example of a large-scale macroevolutionary change. Diversifications at such deep-time scales can now be dissected, modelled and tested. New fossils suggest that dinosaurs originated early in the Middle Triassic, during the recovery of life from the devastating Permo-Triassic mass extinction. Improvements in stratigraphic dating and a new suite of morphometric and comparative evolutionary numerical methods now allow a forensic dissection of one of the greatest turnovers in the history of life. Such studies mark a move from the narrative to the analytical in macroevolutionary research, and they allow us to begin to answer the proposal of George Gaylord Simpson, to explore adaptive radiations using numerical methods.
恐龙出现在三叠纪早期，是有史以来最大规模灭绝事件的余波，在中生代取得了巨大成功。它们最初的多样化是大规模宏观进化变化的经典范例。现在可以对如此长时间尺度的多样化进行剖析、建模和测试。新化石表明，恐龙起源于中三叠世早期，当时生命正在从毁灭性的二叠纪三叠纪大灭绝中恢复。地层年代测定的改进和一套新的形态计量和比较进化数值方法，现在允许对生命历史上最大的一次更替之一进行法医剖析。这些研究标志着宏观进化研究从叙述性向分析性转变，它们使我们能够开始回答乔治·盖洛德·辛普森的提议，即使用数值方法探索适应性辐射。
