ArticleScience advances2022
Early tetrapod cranial evolution is characterized by increased complexity, constraint, and an offset from fin-limb evolution.
Article in Science advances, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reconstructing the major skull myology of the giant stem-amphibian Mastodonsaurus: A case study for early tetrapods.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Feeding biomechanics in vertebrates and beyond.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- Mosaic phenotypic evolution underlies the adaptive success of water-surface colonization in Gerromorpha.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Early sarcopterygian morphological disparity through the Devonian-Carboniferous crisis.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Digital volumetric modeling reveals unique body plan experimentation in the Devonian tetrapodiScience · 2025Article
- Making sense of vertebrate senses from a neural crest and cranial placode evo-devo perspective.Trends in neurosciences · 2025Review
- Quantifying the complexity of plant reproductive structures reveals a history of morphological and functional integration.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Functional reorganisation of the cranial skeleton during the cynodont-mammaliaform transition.Communications biology · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The developmental underpinnings and functional consequences of modifications to the limbs during the origin of the tetrapod body plan are increasingly well characterized, but less is understood about the evolution of the tetrapod skull. Decrease in skull bone number has been hypothesized to promote morphological and functional diversification in vertebrate clades, but its impact during the initial rise of tetrapods is unknown. Here, we test this by quantifying topological changes to cranial anatomy in fossil and living taxa bracketing the fin-to-limb transition using anatomical network analysis. We find that bone loss across the origin of tetrapods is associated not only with increased complexity of bone-to-bone contacts but also with decreasing topological diversity throughout the late Paleozoic, which may be related to developmental and/or mechanical constraints. We also uncover a 10-Ma offset between fin-limb and cranial morphological evolution, suggesting that different evolutionary drivers affected these features during the origin of tetrapods.
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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.