Despite their profound adaptations to the aquatic realm and their apparent success
throughout the Triassic and the Jurassic, ichthyosaurs became extinct roughly 30 million …

How clades diversify early in their history is integral to understanding the origins of
biodiversity and ecosystem recovery following mass extinctions. Moreover, diversification …

Ichthyosaurs were important marine predators in the Early Jurassic, and an abundant and
diverse component of Mesozoic marine ecosystems. Despite their ecological importance …

The fossil record of a major clade often starts after a mass extinction even though
evolutionary rates, molecular or morphological, suggest its pre-extinction emergence (eg …

Background Ichthyosaurs are reptiles that inhabited the marine realm during most of the
Mesozoic. Their Cretaceous representatives have traditionally been considered as the last …

Climate change–induced mass extinctions provide unique opportunities to explore the
impacts of global environmental disturbances on organismal evolution. However, their …

Ichthyosaurs were highly successful marine reptiles with an abundant and well‐studied
fossil record. However, their occurrences through geological time and space are sporadic …

Ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) comprise nearly half of all modern vertebrate diversity, and
are an ecologically and numerically dominant megafauna in most aquatic environments …

Marine reptiles flourished in the Mesozoic oceans, filling ecological roles today dominated
by crocodylians, large fish, sharks and cetaceans. Many groups of these reptiles coexisted …

The end of the Pliocene marked the beginning of a period of great climatic variability and
sea-level oscillations. Here, based on a new analysis of the fossil record, we identify a …