ArticleBiology letters2012
Ontogenetic niche shifts in dinosaurs influenced size, diversity and extinction in terrestrial vertebrates.
Article in Biology letters, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Divergence of ontogenetic dietary shifts in adaptive radiation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Persistent body size bias in the fossil record of Cenozoic North American mammals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A small venomous reptile from the Late Triassic (Norian) of the southwestern United States.PeerJ · 2024Article
- Article
- Competition structured a Late Cretaceous megaherbivorous dinosaur assemblage.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Ecological niche modelling does not support climatically-driven dinosaur diversity decline before the Cretaceous/Paleogene mass extinction.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Article
- Developmental patterns and variation among early theropods.Journal of anatomy · 2018Article
- Article
- Ecological modelling, size distributions and taphonomic size bias in dinosaur faunas: a comment on Codron et al. (2012).Biology letters · 2013Article
- Ecological modelling, size distributions and taphonomic size bias in dinosaur faunas: reply to Brown et al.Biology letters · 2013Article
- Ecological interactions in dinosaur communities: influences of small offspring and complex ontogenetic life histories.PloS one · 2013Article
- An evolutionary cascade model for sauropod dinosaur gigantism--overview, update and tests.PloS one · 2013Review
- The oldest North American pachycephalosaurid and the hidden diversity of small-bodied ornithischian dinosaurs.Nature communications · 2013Article
- Body size distribution of the dinosaurs.PloS one · 2012Article
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4 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Given the physiological limits to egg size, large-bodied non-avian dinosaurs experienced some of the most extreme shifts in size during postnatal ontogeny found in terrestrial vertebrate systems. In contrast, mammals--the other dominant vertebrate group since the Mesozoic--have less complex ontogenies. Here, we develop a model that quantifies the impact of size-specific interspecies competition on abundances of differently sized dinosaurs and mammals, taking into account the extended niche breadth realized during ontogeny among large oviparous species. Our model predicts low diversity at intermediate size classes (between approx. 1 and 1000 kg), consistent with observed diversity distributions of dinosaurs, and of Mesozoic land vertebrates in general. It also provides a mechanism--based on an understanding of different ecological and evolutionary constraints across vertebrate groups--that explains how mammals and birds, but not dinosaurs, were able to persist beyond the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary, and how post-K-T mammals were able to diversify into larger size categories.
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