Clades & Grades – Page 2

12 Days of FISHMAS! Day Three!

Day three of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day two can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the third day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... Three genera of HolosteanTwo ChondrosteiAnd a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Three's...not quite a crowd Next up the family tree, the Holostei, represented by the three modern genera. Two are gars, Lepisosteus and Atractosteus (the latter of which are notable for their heavier snouts and generally…

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December 15, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales / Fishmas2021

12 Days of FISHMAS! Day Two!

Day two of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day one can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the first day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... Two orders of ChondrosteiAnd a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Two's company! Next up the family tree, the Chondrostei, represented by the modern Sturgeon (Acipenseriformes) and Paddlefish (Polyodontiformes). This clade is the basal (living) representative of the broader 'Actinopteri' clade of actinopterygians. The two figures chosen…

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December 14, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales / Fishmas2021

12 Days of FISHMAS! Day One!

So...I have been mulling on this for a few years now--specifically, upon reading through the article Phylogenetic Classification of Bony Fishes (Betancur-R et al. BMC Evolutionary Biology (2017) 17:162) with a few modifications, especially from Comprehensive phylogeny of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) based on transcriptomic and genomic data ((PNAS June 12, 2018 115 (24) 6249-6254)). I love cladograms. I love organizing things. I love animal figures, and I love fish. And so, I decided to work through the Actinopterygii family tree…

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December 13, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales

Vault Tales 220 Clades – Macronychoptera

Today, I'm going to tackle another one of these 'clades', or really more of a 'grade'. In this case, a group among one of the most popular and well-known prehistoric reptiles, the pterosaurs. As a group, it's probably one of the most distinctive...it's reptiles, specifically archosaurs, that are evolved to fly. It's hard to say much about them, everyone knows what a pterosaur is! As a group, they showed up in the late Triassic, although fossil ancestors aren't known--maybe due…

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June 17, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales

Vault tales 215 – Clades – Anura

We're already doing another clade post? Yes! And it's another one where there are a whole lot of figures, but I have just a small sampling. Really, it's almost hard to not have at least a few figures from this clade. I am speaking about the Anura, better known as Frogs! The figures that I have that represent an intermediate clade, the Mesobatrachia. This is the only one where I have any fossil representation, the Eopelobates from the Safari fossils…

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May 31, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales

Vault tales 214 – Clades – Ruminantia

Time to visit another clade, this time a true crown-group clade, the Ruminantia (or Ruminantiomorpha...if we include some of the anthracotherids that are a stem-group to the ruminantia). As a group, this is a fairly familiar one both as animals and as figures. The living groups include the bovids (cows, antelopes, goats, sheep, etc); the moschids (musk deer); the cervids (deer); the giraffids (giraffes and okapi); the antilocaprids (pronghorn) and the basal group the tragulina (chevrotains). Of course, there is…

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May 27, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales

Vault tales 200 – Clades – Pancarnivora

So here I am, with post number 200! That seems crazy! And for this one, I get to look at a clade that I find pretty interesting, and which until recently didn't have a whole lot of representative figures! I am referring to the stem group of the clade Pancarnivora, a group that includes all of our modern Carnivora (cats, hyenas, mongoose, dogs, bears, etc) plus their sister group, often referred to collectively as Creodonta. I think this is still…

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April 8, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales

Vault tales 196 – Clades – Haplorhini

Well, here again with another 'Clades' post which...is another one that can get tricky. I think the name clade has become tricky because of how I broke everything down...but I know what I mean! Anyway, this one will touch upon the 'Haplorhini' which in my database, refers to the basal members of the group of primates that includes the modern Tarsiers, Monkeys, Apes, and Humans (all of which are divided into higher groups of course). At the base of this…

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March 25, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales

Vault tales 184 – Clades – Eucynodontia

Time to do another quick clades overview. This time, we're going to head to the base of the mammal family tree! In this instance, I am talking about the Eucynodontia. As a clade, we are looking at the least inclusive group including mammals and Exaeretodon (foreshadow!); in my personal system, this will refer to the Cynognathia as a 'basal' group (plus a few taxa ancestral to that), sister to the Probainognathia (which contains true mammals and their closer ancestors, broken…

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February 11, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales

Vault tales 179 – Clades – Euchondrocephali

Already another 'clades' post, but this time one with a few more figures at least! This one will be Euchondrocephali--a group of shark-like chondrichthyan fish that are more closely related to the holocephalans (the modern ratfish Chimaera and elephantnose fish Callorhinchus). The funny thing is that for the longest time, these fish were assumed to be part of the true shark lineage (elasmobranchs)...or somehow basal to them, or a sister group to them. Then further research and some better fossil…

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January 25, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales

Vault tales 178 – Clades – “Sauropoda”

Today we have another 'Clades' and this time...it will take more explanation? When I revamped my database taxonomic details, I realized that some groups were very heavily lumped into one category--even though many groups fit in as ancestors to others, etc. Some groups were also more tightly defined than others, often based on how I focus in my collecting (so, lots of fish ones, very few arthropods...still true). I also realized that it could make a clades post really, really…

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January 21, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales

Vault tales 174 – Clades – Eryopiformes

We're back and with another 'Clades' post. This time, it will be a paraphyletic one, 'Eryopiformes'. This is a crown group of the Temnospondyls, and as the name implies, it consists of the famous big 'amphibian' Eryops, but also the rest of the 'Stereospondyls'--and this group may also include the Gymnophiona, the modern caecillians! As it is, when I revamped my database, I organized using grades, clades and useful (to me) breakdowns...so as a group, the Eryopiformes 'clade' consists of…

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January 7, 2021