Telling the Evolutionary Time Molecular Clocks and the Fossil Record

About this book

Paperback reprint of a 2003 book.

Determining the precise timing for the evolutionary origin of groups of organisms has become increasingly important as scientists from diverse disciplines attempt to examine rates of anatomical or molecular evolution and correlate intrinsic biological events to extrinsic environmental events. Molecular clock analyses indicate that many major groups are twice as old, or more, than a literal reading of the fossil record attests, implying that the fossil record is incomplete. Few paleontologists agree that the fossil record is inadequate, arguing instead that our understanding of the molecular clock is far from ideal.

Telling the Evolutionary Time: Molecular Clocks and the Fossil Record represents a discussion between molecular biologists and paleontologists, in which they investigate the significance of competing sources of data, explain the nature of molecular clocks and the fossil record, and strive to develop compromise models that incorporate contradictory opinions. These are presented as a series of case studies dealing with many of the most important groups of complex organisms, such as protists, land plants, flowering plants, complex animals, chordates, vertebrates, tetrapods, and modern birds.

Bringing fresh insight and various perspectives to a complicated argument, Telling the Evolutionary Time assembles all sides of the debate into one comprehensive text. It is a significant volume for research scientists and advanced students across the field of evolutionary biology.

Contents

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

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