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