Thread by @erdgeschichten

To make it also official via Twitter: my first PhD paper came out! We provide a review on the research history of the temporal skull region in tetrapods and how people discussed the evolution of temporal openings from the 19th century until today.
bit.ly/2TR2si1
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What really baffled our minds was the high amount of terminology introduced for the temporal morphology. Next to the well known "Synapsida" or "Diapsida", and lesser known "stegokrotaphic", there were also mostly forgotten terms like "Anomapsida" or "pseudomonozygokrotaph".
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Also the taxonomic content of some of the taxa named after their temporal openings differed over time. For example, did you know that the original Synapsida also included sauropterygians, turtles, and "cotylosaurs", but no "pelycosaurs"?
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It would later turn out, of course, that basing your phylogeny largely on the type of the temporal openings may not be the best idea. Hence, today most of these "-apsid" taxa are not monophyletic anymore.
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Yet, if not phylogenetic informative, why so often do we have temporal openings in many far-related taxa? This is the topic of the second part, where we look at the functional interpretations people proposed over the years.
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Next to land-dwelling, weight loss, or cranial kinesis, authors discussed especially the relationship between the temporal region and force distribution and how changes in skull proportions and the jaw musculature would select for a skull with temporal openings.
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We also highlight developmental explanations. This is especially important for the observation that reductions of bone in the temporal region do not only occur in amniotes but also in various other tetrapods, most notably lissamphibians.
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Because of this, we also propose a new purely descriptive classification scheme of temporal morphology solely based on the presence and arrangement of temporal openings, applicable for all tetrapods.
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We do this also to make the incredible diversity of the temporal region a bit handier for the analytical works currently in preparation. You know, when the real science starts. ;)
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#paleontology #phdchat #fossils #evolution #biology

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