ArticleEcology and evolution2024
Cautionary tales on the use of proxies to estimate body size and form of extinct animals.
Article in Ecology and evolution, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Early gigantic lamniform marks the onset of mega-body size in modern shark evolution.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Predicting body length and assessing the shape of tail-propelled Mesozoic marine reptiles.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Cephalopod body size and macroecology through deep time.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Reassessment of the possible size, form, weight, cruising speed, and growth parameters of the extinct megatooth shark,Palaeontologia electronica (Online) · 2025Article
- Shell Constraints on Evolutionary Body Size-Limb Size Allometry Can Explain Morphological Conservatism in the Turtle Body Plan.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Cautionary tales on the use of proxies to estimate body size and form of extinct animals.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Body size is of fundamental importance to our understanding of extinct organisms. Physiology, ecology and life history are all strongly influenced by body size and shape, which ultimately determine how a species interacts with its environment. Reconstruction of body size and form in extinct animals provides insight into the dynamics underlying community composition and faunal turnover in past ecosystems and broad macroevolutionary trends. Many extinct animals are known only from incomplete remains, necessitating the use of anatomical proxies to reconstruct body size and form. Numerous limitations affecting the appropriateness of these proxies are often overlooked, leading to controversy and downstream inaccuracies in studies for which reconstructions represent key input data. In this perspective, we discuss four prominent case studies (
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