Developmental constraints presumably operate by influencing patterns of variability: when development causes some features to vary more than others and when the level of variability is correlated with evolutionary change, then development can be said to constrain evolution. This idea was tested by examining the relationship between tooth variation and three other factors: developmental processes, tooth function, and evolutionary change. Data came from two lineages of viverravid carnivorans (Viverravidae, Carnivora) from the Paleogene of North America. Variability in cusp position was significantly correlated with position in the developmental cascade, with the amount of intercusp growth (when growth is relatively greater in some cusps than others), and with amount of evolutionary change. This indicates that tooth development exerts a local constraint on phenotypic variability and on the evolutionary response to functional selection, but comparative data suggest that the developmental constraint itself may evolve. Intense directional or stabilizing selection may modify the developmental cascade so that the constraint is either removed or modified to permit new evolutionary patterns. Thus development does not constrain evolution in an absolute sense, but rather introduces modifiable patterns of covariance among crown features. Both development and function seem to play important, intertwined roles in coordinating evolutionary change in mammalian molars.

Estimates of phylogenetic relationships among fossil taxa implicitly provide hypotheses about the quality of the fossil record. Phylogenetic inferences also provide hypotheses about character evolution. The likelihood of any hypothesis that makes predictions about two data sets is simply the likelihood of the hypothesis given the first data set times the likelihood of the same hypothesis given the second data set. In this case, data set 1 represents stratigraphy and data set 2 represents morphology. Statistical methods exist for determining the likelihood of hypothesized levels of sampling. The likelihood of a hypothesized amount of character change yielding a particular most-parsimonious solution (i.e, L[hypothesized length | parsimony length] can be evaluated with simulations. A reanalysis of hyaenid phylogeny based on published character and stratigraphic data is presented here, using the maximum likelihood method. Two trees are found, depending on assumptions about ambiguous species, which are 11 and 10 steps longer than the most parsimonious tree (61 or 60 vs. 50 steps). However, the trees invoke far less stratigraphic debt (9 or 12 units vs. 47 units as measured in Mammal Zones). An important feature of the results is that the most likely tree length given hyaenid character data is estimated to be 56 to 62 steps (depending on the model of character evolution) rather than 50 steps. The likelihood tree suggests stronger trends toward bone-crushing specializations than does the parsimony tree and further suggests that high levels of homoplasy caused parsimony to underestimate the true extent of those trends. Simulations based on the character data and fossil record of hyaenids suggest that the maximum likelihood method is better able to estimate correct trees than is parsimony and somewhat better able to do so than previously proposed phylogenetic methods incorporating stratigraphy.

Analyses of non-avian dinosaur locomotion have been hampered by the lack of an appropriate locomotor analog among extant taxa. Birds, though members of the clade Dinosauria, have undergone significant modifications in hindlimb osteology and musculature. These changes have resulted in a uniquely developed system of limb kinematics (involving a more horizontal femoral posture and knee-dominated limb motion), which precludes the direct use of extant birds as models for non-avian dinosaur locomotion. Analyses of locomotor data from extant birds and mammals suggest a causal link between general hindlimb kinematics, bone strains, and limb bone morphology among these taxa. A model is proposed that relates the amount of torsional loading in femora to bone orientation, such that torsion is maximal in horizontal femora and minimal in vertical femora. Since bone safety factors are lower for torsional shear strains than for longitudinal axial strains, an increase in torsion can potentially affect bone morphology dramatically over evolutionary time. Interpreting the nearly identical limb bone dimensions and limb element proportions of non-avian dinosaurs and mammals in the light of this relationship supports the prediction of similar vertical femoral postures and hip-driven limb kinematics in these two groups.

This information can be used to interpret patterns of locomotor evolution within Dinosauria. The evolution of quadrupedalism with large body size and the acquisition of cursorial or graviportal limb morphologies occurred repeatedly but did not affect the underlying uniformity of dinosaur locomotor morphology. Only derived coelurosaurian theropods (paravians) developed significant modifications of the basic dinosaurian patterns of limb use. Changes in theropod hindlimb kinematics and posture apparently began shortly prior to the origin of flight, but did not acquire a characteristically modern avian aspect until after the later acquisition of derived flight characteristics.

The taxonomic diversity of crocodilians (Crocodylia) through the last 100 million years shows a general decline in the number of genera and species to the present day. But this masks a more complex pattern. This is investigated here using a comprehensive database of fossil crocodilians that provides the opportunity to examine spatial and temporal trends, the influence of sampling, and the role of climate in regulating biodiversity.

Crown-group crocodilians, comprising the extant families Alligatoridae, Crocodylidae, and Gavialidae, show the following trend: an initial exponential diversification through the Late Cretaceous and Paleocene that is restricted to the Northern Hemisphere until after the K/T boundary; relatively constant diversity from the Paleocene into the middle Eocene that may be an artifact of sampling, which might mask an actual decline in numbers; low diversity during the late Eocene and Oligocene; a second exponential diversification during the Miocene and leveling off in the late Miocene and Pliocene; and a precipitous drop in the Pleistocene and Recent. The coincidence of drops in diversity with global cooling is suggestive of a causal link—during the initial glaciation of Antarctica in the Eocene and Oligocene and the Northern Hemisphere glaciation at the end of the Pliocene. However, matters are complicated in the Northern Hemisphere by the climatic effects of regional uplift.

Although the global trend of diversification is unperturbed at the K/T boundary, this is largely due to the exceptionally high rate of origination in the early Paleocene. Nonetheless, the survival of such a demonstrably climate-sensitive group strongly suggests that a climatic explanation for the K/T mass extinctions, especially the demise of the dinosaurs, must be reconsidered.

A hierarchical birth-death process is often used as a model for the diversification of species and higher taxa. We evaluate the validity of this null hypothesis by introducing a new measure: the distribution of species within higher taxa. The proportion of monotypic taxa and the number of species in the largest taxon generated by 1000 simulations are compared with extant mammalian data. The initial model is amended to include two sampling patterns, polyphyletic origins as well as ecological and genetic constraints on higher taxon origination rates. Simulated results are extremely variable. For genera, they are found to predict the true distribution of species quite well. For families, however, the null hypothesis is rejected in all its forms. Simulated distributions have both too many monotypic taxa and too large a dominant taxon. The latter finding stands in contrast to previous claims. Interestingly, although polyphyly and constraints slightly improve the fit of the simulations to the data, sampling does not. Finally, Smith and Patterson's dismissal of monotypic taxa is reviewed in light of this model. We argue that while some apparently monotypic taxa are sampling artifacts, this observation has no bearing on the true proportion of monotypic taxa.

Ecotypic correlations between stable isotopic signals and skeletal size indicate that some Late Cretaceous serial planktic foraminifera were strongly photosymbiotic. In contrast, coeval trochospiral planktic foraminifera do not exhibit the isotope/size signatures that typify strongly photosymbiotic species. Comparison to Cenozoic taxa demonstrates that photosymbiosis has recurred throughout planktic foraminiferal history and has evolved independently in superfamilies characterized by very different gross skeletal morphologies. The historical contingency of that evolution is illustrated by the consequences of the Cretaceous/Paleogene mass extinction, which terminated the Cretaceous lineages of photosymbiotic planktic foraminifera but did not permanently extinguish photosymbiont reliance by planktic foraminifera.