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Understanding the dynamics of trends within evolving lineages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

John Alroy
John Alroy*
Affiliation:
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, 735 State Street, Santa Barbara, California 93101. E-mail: alroy@nceas.ucsb.edu
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Extract

The study of evolutionary trends is one of the oldest and most intriguing topics in evolutionary biology and paleobiology (McNamara 1990). Workers since Cuvier, Lyell, and Owen have wanted to know if the fossil record demonstrates “progression” within temporal sequences of related organisms. Regardless of whether changes in the average values of morphological characters are progressive in any meaningful sense, these changes are still of great interest. In practice, questions about trends are most commonly framed by paleontologists in terms of “complexity” (however defined) or body size (McShea 1998a).

Information

Type
Matters of the Record
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , Summer 2000, pp. 319 - 329
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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