Telling the Evolutionary Time: Molecular Clocks and the Fossil Record

ISBN-13: 9780415275248 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 296 str.

Philip Donoghue and Paul Smith; Donoghue C. J. Donoghue; Philip C. J. Donoghue

Opis

Understanding the timing of major evolutionary events is important, not only in itself, but critical also to our understanding of the tempo and implied mechanism of evolutionary change. A literal reading of the fossil record suggests that many of the major groups of complex organisms arose in an extremely short interval of time, around half a billion years ago. This has led to the suggestion that special mechanisms of evolutionary change must have operated at this time. However, mathematical models for evolutionary change at the level of base-substitution suggest that these evolutionary events occured over five hundred million years earlier. By implication the fossil record records only the latter half of evolutionary history. This text represents a discussion between molecular biologists and palaeontologists, in which they investigate the significance of competing sources of data, explain the nature of molecular clocks and the fossil record, and develop compromise models that incorporate conflicting opinions. These are presented as a series of case studies dealing with many of the most important groups of complex organisms.

Spis treści

Molecular Clocks: Whence and Whither. Molecular Clocks and a Biological Trigger for Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth Events and the Cambrian Explosion. Phylogenetic Fuses and Evolutionary 'Explosions': Conflicting Evidence and Critical Tests. The Quality of the Fossil Record. Ghost Ranges. Episodic Evolution of Nuclear Small Subunit Ribosomal RNA Gene in the Stem-lineage of Foraminifera. Dating the Origin of Land Plants. Angiosperm Divergence Times: Congruence and Incongruence Between Fossils and Sequence Divergence Estimates. The Limitations of the Fossil Record and the Dating of the Origin of the Bilateria. The Origin and Early Evolution of Chordates: Molecular Clocks and the Fossil Record. Bones, Molecules and Crown-tetrapod Origins. The Fossil record and Molecular Clocks: Basal Radiations within the Neornithes.

O autorze

Philip C. J. Donoghue, M. Paul Smith