ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
The fossilized birth-death process for coherent calibration of divergence-time estimates.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 260 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
260 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Building phenotypic character matrices for phylogenetic inference: exploration of 35 years of practice.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Pooled it
- Phylogenetic congruence, conflict and consilience between molecular and morphological data.BMC ecology and evolution · 2023Pooled it
- Evolutionary Models for the Diversification of Placental Mammals Across the KPg Boundary.Frontiers in genetics · 2019Pooled it
- Comparative cranial biomechanics reveal macroevolutionary trends in theropod dinosaurs, with emphasis on Tyrannosauroidea.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- An ontological morphological phylogenetic framework for living and extinct ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii).Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- Deep learning reveals ecological decoupling and rate heterogeneity in Hymenoptera wing evolution.Science advances · 2026Article
- Competing methods of divergence time estimation recover diverse evolutionary timescales.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Environmental Context of Hominin Foot Evolution.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Article
- Estimating Divergence Times and Diversification Rates with the Unresolved Fossilized Birth-Death Process.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- On the origin of animals and placental mammals: a critique of literalist readings of the fossil record.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Triplet-based species tree estimation: Sensitivity to gene tree rooting (or lack thereof).PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Fossil record biases skew inferences of mammal trait evolution.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Review
- Niche evolution and asymmetric diversification in elm species (Ulmaceae).Plant diversity · 2026Article
- The endocarp evolution of Cissampelideae (Menispermaceae): integrating extant and fossil species.Annals of botany · 2026Article
- Revisiting the enigmatic Cheirolepidiaceae: origins, phylogenetic relationships, and a new whole-plant concept.Annals of botany · 2026Article
- An Evolving View of Character Macroevolution.Systematic biology · 2026Review
- The Phylodynamic Threshold of Measurably Evolving Populations.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Integrated analysis of fossils and molecular divergence time estimates a latest Jurassic origin of angiosperms.Nature plants · 2026Article
200 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Time-calibrated species phylogenies are critical for addressing a wide range of questions in evolutionary biology, such as those that elucidate historical biogeography or uncover patterns of coevolution and diversification. Because molecular sequence data are not informative on absolute time, external data--most commonly, fossil age estimates--are required to calibrate estimates of species divergence dates. For Bayesian divergence time methods, the common practice for calibration using fossil information involves placing arbitrarily chosen parametric distributions on internal nodes, often disregarding most of the information in the fossil record. We introduce the "fossilized birth-death" (FBD) process--a model for calibrating divergence time estimates in a Bayesian framework, explicitly acknowledging that extant species and fossils are part of the same macroevolutionary process. Under this model, absolute node age estimates are calibrated by a single diversification model and arbitrary calibration densities are not necessary. Moreover, the FBD model allows for inclusion of all available fossils. We performed analyses of simulated data and show that node age estimation under the FBD model results in robust and accurate estimates of species divergence times with realistic measures of statistical uncertainty, overcoming major limitations of standard divergence time estimation methods. We used this model to estimate the speciation times for a dataset composed of all living bears, indicating that the genus Ursus diversified in the Late Miocene to Middle Pliocene.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.