Evidence for modular evolution in a long-tailed pterosaur with a pterodactyloid skull
Junchang Lü1,*, David M. Unwin2, Xingsheng Jin3, Yongqing Liu1 and Qiang Ji1
-Author Affiliations
1Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Beijing 100037, People's Republic of China
2School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, 19 University Road, Leicester LE1 7RF, UK
3Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310012, People's Republic of China
*Author for correspondence (lujc2008@126.com).
Abstract
The fossil record is a unique source of evidence for important evolutionary phenomena such as transitions between major clades. Frustratingly, relevant fossils are still comparatively rare, most transitions have yet to be documented in detail and the mechanisms that underpin such events, typified by rapid large scale changes and for which microevolutionary processes seem insufficient, are still unclear. A new pterosaur (Mesozoic flying reptile) from the Middle Jurassic of China, Darwinopterus modularisgen. et sp. nov., provides the first insights into a prominent, but poorly understood transition between basal, predominantly long-tailed pterosaurs and the more derived, exclusively short-tailed pterodactyloids.Darwinopterus exhibits a remarkable ‘modular’ combination of characters: the skull and neck are typically pterodactyloid, exhibiting numerous derived character states, while the remainder of the skeleton is almost completely plesiomorphic and identical to that of basal pterosaurs. This pattern supports the idea that modules, tightly integrated complexes of characters with discrete, semi-independent and temporally persistent histories, were the principal focus of natural selection and played a leading role in evolutionary transitions.
evolution Middle Jurassic China Pterosauria Pterodactyloidea Darwinopterus
Footnotes
Received September 3, 2009.
Accepted September 24, 2009.
© 2009 The Royal Society
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Read another view/Leia outra opinião:
You have probably heard that evolution has difficulty explaining the origin of amazingly complex designs. It turns out that evolutionists have quietly solved the problem while we weren’t paying attention. With little fanfare, they have rolled outmodular evolution. This new kind of evolution is truly astonishing. What it does is, well, it creates complexity just like that. Evolutionists once thought that biology’s miracles evolved more or less one step at a time. But such staid ideas about evolution have long since become, as J. D. Hooker probably would say if he were around today, “old stick-in-the-mud doctrines.” If bankers can liven things up then why not evolutionists?
...
Modular Evolution: All of The Benefits, None of the Risk
+++++
Read another view/Leia outra opinião:
You have probably heard that evolution has difficulty explaining the origin of amazingly complex designs. It turns out that evolutionists have quietly solved the problem while we weren’t paying attention. With little fanfare, they have rolled outmodular evolution. This new kind of evolution is truly astonishing. What it does is, well, it creates complexity just like that. Evolutionists once thought that biology’s miracles evolved more or less one step at a time. But such staid ideas about evolution have long since become, as J. D. Hooker probably would say if he were around today, “old stick-in-the-mud doctrines.” If bankers can liven things up then why not evolutionists?
...
Modular Evolution: All of The Benefits, None of the Risk
