Organisms display a considerable variety of body sizes and shapes, and macroevolutionary
investigations help to understand the evolutionary dynamics behind such variations. Turtles …

Land-to-sea evolutionary transitions are great transformations where terrestrial amniote
clades returned to aquatic environments. These secondarily aquatic amniote clades include …

Modern baleen whales are unique as large-sized filter feeders, but their roles were
replicated much earlier by diverse marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. Here, we investigate …

Neck elongation has appeared independently in several tetrapod groups, including giraffes
and sauropod dinosaurs on land, birds and pterosaurs in the air, and sauropterygians …

The aftermath of the end‐Permian mass extinction provided ecological opportunities for
many groups of reptiles, marking the beginning of reptile dominance of the Mesozoic …

Modern cetaceans are considered the best anatomical and ecological analogue for many
Mesozoic secondary aquatic reptiles. Such similarities extend also after the death of these …

In the early 19th century, long before the discovery of the dinosaurs, scientists and the public
alike were faced with the realization that strange beasts, wholly extinct, were once …

Body size is the key to understanding many biological properties. Sizes of extinct animals
are usually estimated from body reconstructions since their masses can not be weighed …

Body mass and surface area are among the most important biological properties, but such
information are lacking for some extant organisms and all extinct species. Numerous …