Wednesday 7 May 2014

Tracking Turtles Through Time

May 6, 2014


Turtles are more closely related to birds and crocodilians than to lizards and snakes, according to a study from Dartmouth, Yale and other institutions that examines one of the most contentious questions in evolutionary biology.

The findings appear in the journal Evolution & Development.

The research team looked at how the major groups of living reptiles, which number more than 20,000 species, are interrelated. The relationships of some reptile groups are well understood — birds are most closely related to crocodilians among living reptiles, while snakes, lizards and New Zealand’s tuatara form a natural group. But the question of how turtles fit into this evolutionary picture has remained unclear. Are turtles more closely related to archosaurs (birds and crocodilians) or to lepidosaurs (lizards, snakes and tuatara)? Or are these other reptiles more closely related to each other than to turtles?


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