Homalozoans include four classes of non-pentamerous Paleozoic echinoderms: Homostelea (cinctans), Ctenocystoidea (ctenoid-bearing homalozoans), Homoiostelea (solutes), and Stylophora (cornutes and mitrates). Their atypical morphologies have historically made it difficult to relate them to other classes. Therefore, their systematic positions have been represented by two hypotheses (H): as stem taxa to echinoderms (H1) or as stem taxa to chordates (H2). These conclusions rest on previous inability to recognize synapomorphies with more crownward echinoderms, resulting in a forcing of the homalozoans down the phylogenetic tree that is more artifactual than evolutionary. The Extraxial-Axial Theory (EAT) identifies body-wall homologies, common ontogenetic patterns, and major events in bodyplan evolution. Therefore, the EAT can identify synapomorphies among even the most disparate of echinoderms. Application of the EAT undermines both H1 and H2 and strongly suggests that the bizarre asymmetry of homalozoans is a derived characteristic, and not indicative of plesiomorphic morphology for either chordates or echinoderms. Each of the four homalozoan clades and their major features are reexamined using the EAT. New findings are presented concerning homologies of thecal body wall, but we focus on stems, arms, and brachioles, which are recognized as very distinct products of independent evolutionary events. The results support a new interpretation (H3) of homalozoans as a polyphyletic assemblage that can be parsed out into other, clearly echinoderm clades. The Homoiostelea and Homostelea share the blastozoan synapomorphy of a brachiole. The enigmatic Ctenocystoidea also seem to have brachioles. The Stylophora have an arm as in crinoids. H3 is also more congruent with the known fossil record. Although they are stratigraphically early echinoderms, homalozoans are not indicative of the plesiomorphic morphology of the phylum.

Exploration of the theoretical morphospace of erect helical colony form in Bryozoa, created by McKinney and Raup (1982), reveals that only a small volume of the three-dimensional space of hypothetical form is occupied by actual colonies of the Paleozoic fenestrates (Class Stenolaemata) Archimedes and Helicopora, helical species of the cheilostome (Class Gymnolaemata) Bugula, and the cyclostome (Class Stenolaemata) Crisidmonea archimediformis. Actual helical-colony bryozoans are not found in regions of the morphospace characterized by colony geometries that possess the largest surface areas of filtration sheet. Examination of computer-simulated colonies in the theoretical morphospace reveals that, although possessing high surface areas, colonies in the empty region of high-surface-area morphospace possess other aspects of geometry that are unrealistic as filter-feeding geometries: the filtration-sheet whorls are held at small acute angles to the central colony axis and are deeply nested within one another, both of which are disadvantageous conditions for the system of filter feeding used by the extant cheilostome Bugula, and presumably by extinct helical-colony bryozoans as well.

Even though actual bryozoans are found only in the low to intermediate surface-area regions of the theoretical morphospace, surface area of filtration sheet is a major determinant of form in these helical colonies, as is evidenced by a negative correlation in values of the parameters BWANG and ELEV exhibited by the colony data. Minimum values of BWANG are even further constrained by the apparent need of the Archimedes colonies to maintain filtration-sheet branching densities within the range of 20 to 50.

Changes in genus diversity within higher taxa of marine animals on the temporal scale of a few million years are more strongly correlated with changes in extinction rate than with changes in origination rate during the Paleozoic. After the Paleozoic the relative roles of origination and extinction in diversity dynamics are reversed. Metazoa as well as individual higher taxa shift from one mode of diversity dynamics to the other. The magnitude of taxonomic rates, the relative variance of origination and extinction rates, and the presence or absence of a long-term secular increase in diversity all fail to account for the shift in importance of origination and extinction in diversity changes. Origination and extinction rates both tend to be diversity-dependent, but different modes of diversity-dependence may contribute to the change in diversity dynamics from the Paleozoic to the post-Paleozoic. During the Paleozoic, there is a weak tendency for extinction rates to be more diversity-dependent than origination rates, whereas after the Paleozoic the two rates are about equally diversity-dependent on average.

Geometric properties of the shells of 123 species of extant Bivalvia were analyzed from the viewpoint of theoretical morphology. The effects of shell form and the structure of ligament on the interumbonal space and the maximum shell opening received particular attention. The results of computer simulation and morphospace analysis indicate that possessing both prosogyrous shell form and an extended hinge without the parivincular ligament tends to cause space conflict between umbones or dorsal shell margins of right and left valves. To a large degree, a prosogyrous shell form with a long parivincular ligament helps shell opening without umbonal conflict, if the shell is flat enough to avoid the mutual interference between dorsal shell margins of closed valves. Extension of the ligament and plunging of the anterior part of the coiling axis into the ventral side provide enough space along the dorsal shell margins in which a parivincular ligament and its substrata are developed.

Following the end-Ordovician extinction, global clade diversity of Silurian trilobites dropped to about half of Ordovician levels. Although clade diversity failed to recover, this extinction had surprisingly little long-term impact on the number of trilobite species that occupied local habitats (alpha diversity). A new compilation of data from Laurentia and other continents indicates that Silurian trilobite alpha diversities in all major environments were comparable to those of the Late Cambrian and Ordovician; shallow subtidal diversity reached an all-time high during the Late Ordovician. The profound differences in patterns at local and global levels demonstrate the necessity for a hierarchical approach to analyses of diversity. Factors governing global clade diversity are lodged at hierarchical levels beyond those controlling local species richness and must be sought in studies of between-habitat (beta) or geographic (gamma) diversity.

Statistical inference about mass extinction events is commonly based on the pattern of fossil finds among a group of taxa. An important issue for existing methods is the selection of taxa for inclusion in the analysis. A common approach is to select taxa on the basis of the stratigraphic height of their uppermost finds. This approach creates a bias in favor of detecting a mass extinction event. This paper describes and illustrates an approach that avoids this problem.

Data from a comprehensive literature survey for the first time provide stage-level resolution of Early Cretaceous through Pleistocene species diversity for nongeniculate coralline algae. Distributions of a total of 655 species in 23 genera were compiled from 222 publications. These represent three family-subfamily groupings each with distinctive present-day distributions: (1) Sporolithaceae, low latitude, mainly deep water; (2) Melobesioid corallinaceans, high latitude, shallow water, to low latitude, deep water; (3) Lithophylloid/mastophoroid corallinaceans, mid- to low latitude, shallow water.

Raw data show overall Early Cretaceous-early Miocene increase to 245 species in the Aquitanian, followed by collapse to only 43 species in the late Pliocene. Rarefaction analysis confirms the pattern of increase but suggests that scarcity of publications exaggerates Neogene decline, which was actually relatively slight.

Throughout the history of coralline species, species richness broadly correlates with published global paleotemperatures based on benthic foraminifer δ18O values. The warm-water Sporolithaceae were most species-abundant during the Cretaceous, but they declined and were rapidly overtaken by the Corallinaceae as Cenozoic temperatures declined.

Trends within the Corallinaceae during the Cenozoic appear to reflect environmental change and disturbance. Cool- and deep-water melobesioids rapidly expanded during the latest Cretaceous and Paleocene. Warmer-water lithophylloid/mastophoroid species increased slowly during the same period but more quickly in the early Oligocene, possibly reflecting habitat partitioning as climatic belts differentiated and scleractinian reef development expanded near the Eocene/Oligocene boundary. Melobesioids abruptly declined in the late Pliocene-Pleistocene, while lithophylloid/mastophoroids increased again. Possibly, onset of glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere (~2.4 Ma) sustained or accentuated latitudinal differentiation and global climatic deterioration, disrupting high-latitude melobesioid habitats. Simultaneously, this could have caused moderate environmental disturbance in mid- to low-latitude ecosystems, promoting diversification of lithophylloids/mastophoroids through the “fission effect.”

Extinction events that eliminated >20% of coralline species were most severe (58–67% of species) during the Late Cretaceous and late Miocene-Pliocene. Each extinction was followed by substantial episodes of origination, particularly in the Danian and Pleistocene.

Fossil floras are an important source of quantitative terrestrial paleoclimate data. Many paleoclimate estimates are based on relationships observed in modern vegetation between leaf morphology and climate, such as the increase in the percentage of entire-margined species with increasing temperature and the increase in leaf size with increasing precipitation. An important question is whether these observed relationships are universal or regional; for example, recent studies suggest that significant differences exist between floras from three domains: the Northern Hemisphere, New Zealand/Australia, and subalpine zones. Also, debate exists over which statistical models of modern data sets, univariate or multivariate, provide the most accurate estimates of paleoclimate. In this study, 12 foliage samples from living Bolivian forests are compared with data sets from different regions. Models based on data sets from North America and Japan, namely the Climate-Leaf Analysis Multivariate Program (CLAMP) data set of J. A. Wolfe, and from east Asia produce reasonably accurate estimates of temperature and precipitation, suggesting that the climate-leaf morphology relationships for Bolivian vegetation do not differ significantly from those for Northern Hemisphere vegetation. The mean leaf size for a given mean annual precipitation is smaller than for a data set from the Western Hemisphere and Africa, but this difference is most likely due to different sampling methods. As for estimating climate from fossil floras, these results, along with the analysis of four other regional data sets, imply that the most accurate climate estimates will be produced by the predictor data set with the most similar climate-leaf morphology relationships. Unfortunately, our present lack of understanding of why climate-morphology relationships vary between the North America/Japan, New Zealand/Australia, and subalpine domains makes it difficult to identify data sets similar to paleofloras. Until we learn more, it is probably best to compare fossil floras to predictor data sets from the same domain. The performance of the various statistical methods depends on the nature of the predictor data set. Multiple regression analysis tends to produce the most accurate estimates for small data sets with a narrow range of environmental variation that have similar relationships to the flora, and linear regression or canonical correspondence analysis for the larger and more varied CLAMP data set. If a similar predictor data set is not available, then nearest-neighbor analysis can still produce accurate paleoclimate estimates.

Sexual dimorphism is documented in 35 articulated adult skeletons, 24 females, and 11 males, of the Miocene rhinoceros Teleoceras major from Ashfall Fossil Beds, Nebraska. Morphometric analysis of 51 cranial, mandibular, forelimb, and hindlimb characters reveals larger male mean values in 50 of the 51 measurements, of which 23 are significantly different (p ≤ 0.01). The most clearly dimorphic feature is the i2 diameter. The dimorphism evident in additional mandibular and cranial characters is conservative when compared with the dimorphism present in the fore- and hindlimbs. Non-overlapping male and female ranges are recorded for humerus length, radius length, radius proximal width, and femur length, with corresponding dimorphism ratios (DR = male ÷ female) of 1.11, 1.12, 1.11, and 1.10. Maximum male longbone lengths exceed minimum female lengths by an average of 24% (20–29%). Developmental maturity is apparently asynchronous in T. major, with fusion of longbone epiphyses delayed a minimum of two relative adult age classes in males. Significant sexual dimorphism is evident in the radius (DR = 1.34) and femur (DR = 1.19) cross-sectional areas. Estimates of body mass suggest a DR value between 1.13 and 1.23. The cranial, mandibular, and body-size dimorphism in T. major approaches that seen in the extant rhinoceroses Ceratotherium simum and Rhinoceros unicornis. However, the apparent herd structure and breeding-age sex ratio for the Ashfall herd suggests a behavioral ecology for T. major different from that of extant rhinoceroses. Teleoceras was likely a herding polygynous species ecologically more similar to extant Hippopotamus amphibius of Africa.

This paper documents a series of methodological innovations that are relevant to macroevolutionary studies. The new methods are applied to updated faunal and body mass data sets for North American fossil mammals, documenting several key trends across the late Cretaceous and Cenozoic. The methods are (1) A maximum likelihood formulation of appearance event ordination. The reformulated criterion involves generating a maximally likely hypothesized relative ordering of first and last appearances (i.e., an age range chart). The criterion takes faunal occurrences, stratigraphic relationships, and the sampling probability of individual genera and species into account. (2) A nonparametric temporal interpolation method called “shrink-wrapping” that makes it possible to employ the greatest possible number of tie points without violating monotonicity or allowing abrupt changes in slopes. The new calibration method is used in computing provisional definitions of boundaries among North American land mammal ages. (3) Additional methods for randomized subsampling of faunal lists, one weighting the number of lists that have been drawn by the sum of the square of the number of occurrences in each list, and one further modifying this approach to account for long-term changes in average local species richness. (4) Foote's new equations for instantaneous speciation and extinction rates. The equations are rederived and used to generate time series, confirm that logistic dynamics result from the diversity dependence of speciation but not extinction, and define the median duration of species (i.e., 2.6 m.y. for Eocene-Pleistocene mammals). (5) A method employing the G likelihood ratio statistic that is used to quantify the volatility of changes in the relative proportion of species falling in each of several major taxonomic groups. (6) Univariate measures of body mass distributions based on ordinary moment statistics (mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis). These measures are favored over the method of cenogram analysis. Data are presented showing that even diverse individual fossil collections merely yield a noisy version of the same pattern seen in the overall continental data set. Peaks in speciation rates, extinction rates, proportional volatility, and shifts in body mass distributions occur at different times, suggesting that environmental perturbations do not have simple effects on the biota.

Living crocodilians (Crocodylia) and birds (Neornithes) differ in many aspects of hindlimb anatomy and locomotor function. How did this disparity evolve? We integrate information from fossils with functional descriptions of locomotion in living crocodilians and birds, using a phylogenetic perspective. We then outline the major changes in three-dimensional control of the hip joint along the line from the ancestral archosaur to birds. Our analysis reveals that most aspects of hip morphology and function in Alligator are ancestral for Archosauria. Femoral protractors and retractors are located cranial and caudal to the hip, respectively. Similarly, femoral adductors and abductors are located ventral and dorsal to the hip. Transformations of this ancestral pattern on the line to birds involved modifications in osteology, myology, and neural control. In some cases, homologous muscles changed function by acquiring new activity patterns. In others, activity was conserved, but origins and/or insertions were altered. Fossil theropods document the stepwise evolution of a novel mechanism of limb adduction/abduction involving long-axis rotation of the femur. This mechanism accounts for the conspicuous absence of significant musculature ventral and dorsal to the hip joint in extant birds.