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Evolutionary biology

Mass survivals

Nature volume 446, pages 501–502 (2007)Cite this article

The conclusion that the primary divergences of the modern groups of mammals occurred in the mid-Cretaceous requires fresh thinking about this facet of evolutionary history — especially in ecological terms.

On page 507 of this issue, Bininda-Emonds and co-authors1 present an evolutionary tree of more than 4,500 mammals, and conclude that more than 40 lineages of modern mammals have survived from the Cretaceous, some 100 million to 85 million years (Myr) ago, to the present. This is paralleled by Brown and colleagues' analyses for birds, just published in Biology Letters2: they claim that more than 40 avian lineages have likewise survived from before the extinctions at the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary 65 Myr ago. These numbers of surviving lineages push back the evolutionary history of many mammals and birds much further than earlier estimates based on smaller data sets3,4. But strong claims need strong evidence to support them.

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Figure 1: Mammalian diversification over evolutionary time.

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  1. David Penny and Matthew J. Phillips are at the Allan Wilson Center for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. d.penny@.massey.ac.nz m.j.phillips@massey.ac.nz,

    David Penny & Matthew J. Phillips

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Penny, D., Phillips, M. Mass survivals. Nature 446, 501–502 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/446501a

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