Best Practices for Justifying Fossil Calibrations

James F. Parham(California State University, Bakersfield), Philip C. J. Donoghue(University of Bristol), Christopher J. Bell(The University of Texas at Austin), Tyler Calway(University of Chicago), Jason J. Head(University of Nebraska–Lincoln), Patricia A. Holroyd(Museum of Vertebrate Zoology), Jun Inoue(The University of Tokyo), Randall B. Irmis(University of Utah), Walter G. Joyce(University of Tübingen), Daniel T. Ksepka(North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences), José Salvatore Leister Patané(Instituto Butantan), Nathan D. Smith(Field Museum of Natural History), James E. Tarver(Dartmouth College), Marcel van Tuinen(University of North Carolina Wilmington), Ziheng Yang(University College London), Kenneth D. Angielczyk(Field Museum of Natural History), Jenny M. Greenwood(University of Bristol), Christy A. Hipsley(Museum für Naturkunde), Louis L. Jacobs(Southern Methodist University), Peter J. Makovicky(Field Museum of Natural History), Johannes Müller(Museum für Naturkunde), Krister T. Smith(Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt/M), Jessica M. Theodor(University of Calgary), Rachel C. M. Warnock(University of Bristol), Michael J. Benton(University of Bristol)
Systematic Biology
September 21, 2011
10.1093/sysbio/syr107
Cited by 779Open Access
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Abstract

Our ability to correlate biological evolution with climate change, geological evolution, and other historical patterns is essential to understanding the processes that shape biodiversity. Combining data from the fossil record with molecular phylogenetics represents an exciting synthetic approach to this challenge. The first molecular divergence dating analysis (Zuckerkandl and Pauling 1962) was based on a measure of the amino acid differences in the hemoglobin molecule, with replacement rates established (calibrated) using paleontological age estimates from textbooks (e.g., Dodson 1960). Since that time, the amount of molecular sequence data has increased dramatically, affording ever-greater opportunities to apply molecular divergence approaches to fundamental problems in evolutionary biology.

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