Cope's rule is the trend toward increasing body size in a lineage over geological time. The
rule has been explained either as passive diffusion away from a small initial body size or as …

The notion that large body size confers some intrinsic advantage to biological species has
been debated for centuries. Using a phylogenetic statistical approach that allows the rate of …

Cope's rule proposes that animal lineages evolve toward larger body size over time. To test
this hypothesis across all marine animals, we compiled a data set of body sizes for 17,208 …

A classic question in evolutionary biology concerns the tempo and mode of lineage
evolution. Considered variously in relation to resource utilization, intrinsic constraints or …

The island rule is the phenomenon of the miniaturization of large animals and the gigantism
of small animals on islands, with mammals providing the classic case studies. Several …

The largest known dinosaurs weighed at least 20 million times as much as the smallest,
indicating exceptional phenotypic divergence. Previous studies have focused on extreme …

Ecology, evolution, and historical events all contribute to biogeographic patterns, but studies
that integrate them are scarce. Here we focus on how biotic exchanges of mammals during …

Explanations for the evolution of body size in mammals have remained surprisingly elusive
despite the central importance of body size in evolutionary biology. Here, we present a …

There is accumulating evidence that macroevolutionary patterns of mammal evolution
during the Cenozoic follow similar trajectories on different continents. This would suggest …

Cope's rule, wherein a lineage increases in body size through time, was originally motivated
by macroevolutionary patterns observed in the fossil record. More recently, some authors …