See more from this Division: Pardee Keynote Sessions
See more from this Session: Breakthroughs in Paleontology: The Paleontological Society Centennial Symposium
Abstract:
The vertebrate record as a whole shows successive waves of diversification in relation to evolutionary innovation. Diversification of fishes started early in the Paleozoic, with later innovation enabling tetrapods to cross the frontier from aquatic to terrestrial adaptive zones. Dinosaurs and aquatic reptiles dominated Mesozoic lands and seas, and birds colonized the air. Dinosaurs as dinosaurs became extinct at the end of the Mesozoic, but birds and mammals evolved rapidly to become modern orders in the Cenozoic, typified by horses with a dense fossil record from virtually the beginning of the Eocene. Whales crossed the aquatic-terrestrial frontier a second time, this time backward, and bats crossed the frontier from land to air. Both are represented by Eocene skeletons intermediate in age and form that record the transition, Vertebrate success in the past involved innovation and diversification, and vertebrate fossils today illuminate important questions in the history of life.
See more from this Division: Pardee Keynote Sessions
See more from this Session: Breakthroughs in Paleontology: The Paleontological Society Centennial Symposium