This paper reviews the extensive carnivoran fauna of Laetoli on the basis of collections
housed in Berlin, London, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam. Members of the Carnivora are …

Since the late Pleistocene, large-bodied mammals have been extirpated from much of Earth.
Although all habitable continents once harbored giant mammals, the few remaining species …

Historical biogeography has a diversity of methods for inferring ancestral geographic ranges
on phylogenies, but many of the methods have conflicting assumptions, and there is no …

The transition of hominins to a largely meat-based diet∼ 1.8 million years ago led to the
exploitation of other mammals for food and resources. As hominins, particularly archaic and …

The remarkable radiation of South American (SA) canids produced 10 extant species
distributed across diverse habitats, including disparate forms such as the short-legged …

Comparative biologists often attempt to draw inferences about tempo and mode in evolution
by comparing the fit of evolutionary models to phylogenetic comparative data consisting of a …

The golden jackal of Africa (Canis aureus) has long been considered a conspecific of
jackals distributed throughout Eurasia, with the nearest source populations in the Middle …

The evolutionary history of the wolf-like canids of the genus Canis has been heavily
debated, especially regarding the number of distinct species and their relationships at the …

There are few putative macroevolutionary trends or rules that withstand scrutiny. Here, we
test and verify the purported tendency for animal clades to reach their maximum …

The history of biodiversity is characterized by a continual replacement of branches in the
tree of life. The rise and demise of these branches (clades) are ultimately determined by …