The morphological diversification of carnivores in North America

Abstract

Abstract The evolutionary history of a clade has traditionally been studied through phylogenetics, and taxonomic diversity has been used as a crude proxy for morphological diversity. However, morphological diversification—beyond counting taxa—can provide a very different view of a clade's evolutionary history and allows the investigation of patterns and timing of morphological evolution. In this paper I use dentition to document the pattern of morphological and taxonomic diversification of Carnivoramorpha and mammalian meat eaters in North America. Using the dentition permits ecological inferences to be made, because teeth and diet are closely related. I present a method developed to describe the entire dentition of the Carnivoramorpha and other mammalian meat eaters (Creodonta). Morphological diversification is measured by dental disparity, using the mean pairwise dissimilarity among species. I test the following hypotheses: (1) Morphological diversification was suppressed relative to taxonomic diversifi...