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24 September 2011

Evolutionary Tree of Life for Mammals Greatly Improved

Evolutionary Tree of Life for Mammals Greatly Improved
ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2011) — An international research team led by biologists at the University of California, Riverside and Texas A&M University has released for the first time a large and robust DNA matrix that has representation for all mammalian families. The matrix — the culmination of about five years of painstaking research — has representatives for 99 percent of mammalian families, and covers not only the earliest history of mammalian diversification but also all the deepest divergences among living mammals.

Jon

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3 Comments

24 September 2011

VladimirDinets

would be nice to see their tree… is it online yet?

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25 September 2011

morganchurchill

The link to the study is here, but not sure if you can get the study for free

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/09/21/science.1211028

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25 September 2011

Morgan Churchill

The tree is itself nothing new….going through the phylogeny most of the results are things we have known or suspected for awhile. A quick perusal only picks out a few oddities (camels as the earliest even-toed hoof mammals for instance?).

The divergence dating however…is a bit funky. They have a divergence date for elephants at 7 mya, and 30 mya, which is way way too young. and a divergence date for rodents back into the cretaceous, which is way too old

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