Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

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 …