The good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and Basal saurischians.

Several studies investigating macroevolutionary skull shape variation in fossil reptiles were published recently, often using skull reconstructions taken from the scientific literature. However, this approach could be potentially problematic, because skull reconstructions might differ notably due to...

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Autores principales:	Christian Foth, Oliver W M Rauhut
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2013
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/f9661b614ef741ecaf48d335c7b0aed5
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:f9661b614ef741ecaf48d335c7b0aed52021-11-18T09:00:32ZThe good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and Basal saurischians.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0072007https://doaj.org/article/f9661b614ef741ecaf48d335c7b0aed52013-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/23951279/pdf/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Several studies investigating macroevolutionary skull shape variation in fossil reptiles were published recently, often using skull reconstructions taken from the scientific literature. However, this approach could be potentially problematic, because skull reconstructions might differ notably due to incompleteness and/or deformation of the material. Furthermore, the influence of intraspecific variation has usually not been explored in these studies. Both points could influence the results of morphometric analyses by affecting the relative position of species to each other within the morphospace. The aim of the current study is to investigate the variation in morphometric data between skull reconstructions based on the same specimen, and to compare the results to shape variation occurring in skull reconstructions based on different specimens of the same species (intraspecific variation) and skulls of closely related species (intraspecific variation). Based on the current results, shape variation of different skull reconstructions based on the same specimen seems to have generally little influence on the results of a geometric morphometric analysis, although it cannot be excluded that some erroneous reconstructions of poorly preserved specimens might cause problems occasionally. In contrast, for different specimens of the same species the variation is generally higher than between different reconstructions based on the same specimen. For closely related species, at least with similar ecological preferences in respect to the dietary spectrum, the degree of interspecific variation can overlap with that of intraspecific variation, most probably due to similar biomechanical constraints.Christian FothOliver W M RauhutPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 8, Iss 8, p e72007 (2013)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Christian Foth Oliver W M Rauhut The good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and Basal saurischians.
description	Several studies investigating macroevolutionary skull shape variation in fossil reptiles were published recently, often using skull reconstructions taken from the scientific literature. However, this approach could be potentially problematic, because skull reconstructions might differ notably due to incompleteness and/or deformation of the material. Furthermore, the influence of intraspecific variation has usually not been explored in these studies. Both points could influence the results of morphometric analyses by affecting the relative position of species to each other within the morphospace. The aim of the current study is to investigate the variation in morphometric data between skull reconstructions based on the same specimen, and to compare the results to shape variation occurring in skull reconstructions based on different specimens of the same species (intraspecific variation) and skulls of closely related species (intraspecific variation). Based on the current results, shape variation of different skull reconstructions based on the same specimen seems to have generally little influence on the results of a geometric morphometric analysis, although it cannot be excluded that some erroneous reconstructions of poorly preserved specimens might cause problems occasionally. In contrast, for different specimens of the same species the variation is generally higher than between different reconstructions based on the same specimen. For closely related species, at least with similar ecological preferences in respect to the dietary spectrum, the degree of interspecific variation can overlap with that of intraspecific variation, most probably due to similar biomechanical constraints.
format	article
author	Christian Foth Oliver W M Rauhut
author_facet	Christian Foth Oliver W M Rauhut
author_sort	Christian Foth
title	The good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and Basal saurischians.
title_short	The good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and Basal saurischians.
title_full	The good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and Basal saurischians.
title_fullStr	The good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and Basal saurischians.
title_full_unstemmed	The good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and Basal saurischians.
title_sort	good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and basal saurischians.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2013
url	https://doaj.org/article/f9661b614ef741ecaf48d335c7b0aed5
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The good, the bad, and the ugly: the influence of skull reconstructions and intraspecific variability in studies of cranial morphometrics in theropods and Basal saurischians.

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