ABSTRACT Rocks of the Ediacaran System (635–541 Ma) preserve fossil evidence of some
of the earliest complex macroscopic organisms, many of which have been interpreted as …

The popularity of relaxed clock Bayesian inference of clade origin timings has generated
several recent publications with focal results considerably older than the fossils of the clades …

Animals originated and evolved during a unique time in Earth history—the Neoproterozoic
Era. This paper aims to discuss (1) when landmark events in early animal evolution …

The last several decades of research on avian cognition have revealed surprising parallels
between the abilities of birds—most notably corvids—and great apes. Parrots, albeit far less …

As signposted by the fossil record, the early Cambrian period chronicles the appearance
and evolutionary diversification of most animal phyla in a geologically rapid event …

Since 1990 the recognition of deep homologies among metazoan developmental processes
and the spread of more mechanistic approaches to developmental biology have led to a …

Accumulated records of organic microfossils span billions of years of Earth history. The
majority of this record consists of prokaryotes plus eukaryotes of a protistan grade, yet this …

Divergence-time estimation based on molecular phylogenies and the fossil record has
provided insights into fundamental questions of evolutionary biology. In Bayesian node …

The fossil record of the origins of major groups such as animals and birds has generated
considerable controversy, especially when it conflicts with timings based on molecular clock …

The animal kingdom exhibits a great diversity of organismal form (ie, disparity). Whether the
extremes of disparity were achieved early in animal evolutionary history or clades …