Christy A. Hipsley

TL;DR: A specimen-based protocol for selecting and documenting relevant fossils is presented and future directions for evaluating and utilizing phylogenetic and temporal data from the fossil record are discussed, to establish the best practices for justifying fossils used for the temporal calibration of molecular phylogenies.

TL;DR: A Early/Middle Triassic date for the origin of Lepidosauria disagrees with previous estimates deep within the Permian and suggests the group evolved as part of the faunal recovery after the end-Permain mass extinction as the climate became more humid.

TL;DR: This critique should serve as a call to action for researchers across multiple communities, particularly those working on clades for which fossil records are poor, to develop their own guidelines regarding selection and implementation of alternative calibration types.

TL;DR: Morphometric analysis of body shape and ecology in squamates indicates that the postcranial anatomy of the new taxon is most consistent with opportunistically burrowing habits, which in combination with cranial reinforcement indicates that head-first burrowing evolved before body elongation and may have been a crucial first step in the evolution of amphisbaenian fossoriality.

TL;DR: Comparative genomic analyses demonstrated that amino acid homoplasies between the thylacine and canids are largely consistent with neutral evolution, and support models of adaptive convergence driven primarily by cis-regulatory evolution.