ArticleNature communications2021
Multiple evolutionary origins and losses of tooth complexity in squamates.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Heterodonty in the teeth of the turiasaurian sauropod from Angeac-Charente (Early Cretaceous, southwestern France): Comparison of anatomical and geometric morphometric approaches.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
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- Bounding phenotype transition probabilities via conditional complexity.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Six million years of vole dental evolution shaped by tooth development.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
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- Ecological drivers of jaw morphological evolution in lepidosaurs.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Body size estimation from isolated fossil bones reveals deep time evolutionary trends in North American lizards.PloS one · 2024Article
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- Back in black: melanin-rich skin colour associated with increased net diversification rates in birds.Biology letters · 2023Article
- The developmental basis for scaling of mammalian tooth size.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Form-function relationships underlie rapid dietary changes in a lizard.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Quantitative investigation of pengornithid enantiornithine diet reveals macrocarnivorous ecology evolved in birds by Early Cretaceous.iScience · 2023Article
- Divergent vertebral formulae shape the evolution of axial complexity in mammals.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Article
- Dental form and function in the early feeding diversification of dinosaurs.Science advances · 2022Article
- Reply to: Revisiting life history and morphological proxies for early mammaliaform metabolic rates.Nature communications · 2022Article
- The Jurassic rise of squamates as supported by lepidosaur disparity and evolutionary rates.eLife · 2022Article
- X-ray microtomography imaging of craniofacial hard tissues in selected reptile species with different types of dentition.GigaScience · 2022Article
- The developmental origins of heterodonty and acrodonty as revealed by reptile dentitions.Science advances · 2021Article
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4 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Teeth act as tools for acquiring and processing food, thus holding a prominent role in vertebrate evolution. In mammals, dental-dietary adaptations rely on tooth complexity variations controlled by cusp number and pattern. Complexity increase through cusp addition has dominated the diversification of mammals. However, studies of Mammalia alone cannot reveal patterns of tooth complexity conserved throughout vertebrate evolution. Here, we use morphometric and phylogenetic comparative methods across fossil and extant squamates to show they also repeatedly evolved increasingly complex teeth, but with more flexibility than mammals. Since the Late Jurassic, multiple-cusped teeth evolved over 20 times independently from a single-cusped common ancestor. Squamates frequently lost cusps and evolved varied multiple-cusped morphologies at heterogeneous rates. Tooth complexity evolved in correlation with changes in plant consumption, resulting in several major increases in speciation. Complex teeth played a critical role in vertebrate evolution outside Mammalia, with squamates exemplifying a more labile system of dental-dietary evolution.
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