Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Oysters And Mammoths: Fossils In Central Texas–Texas Academy Of Science 2017, Chris Barker, R. Larell Nielson

Faculty Publications

Texas Academy of Science, 2017 Field Trip

This year's Texas Academy of Science Geology Field Trip takes you to two very different fossil sites in central Texas. Stop 1 is along a quiet road in the Hill Country where you can collect abundant invertebrate fossils from the Lower Cretaceous Comanche Peak Limestone and Walnut Clay. The second stop of the trip is at one of the newest units of America's park service: the Waco Mammoth National Monument. At this site you will see a spectacular fossil discovery that is now one of the main mammoth sites in North America. And …

W(H)Ither Fossils? Studying Morphological Character Evolution In The Age Of Molecular Sequences, Elizabeth J. Hermsen, Jonathan R. Hendricks

Faculty Publications

A major challenge in the post-genomics era will be to integrate molecular sequence data from extant organisms with morphological data from fossil and extant taxa into a single, coherent picture of phylogenetic relationships; only then will these phylogenetic hypotheses be effectively applied to the study of morphological character evolution. At least two analytical approaches to solving this problem have been utilized: (1) simultaneous analysis of molecular sequence and morphological data with fossil taxa included as terminals in the analysis, and (2) the molecular scaffold approach, in which morphological data are analyzed over a molecular backbone (with constraints that force extant …