The colonization of land by animals: molecular phylogeny and divergence times among arthropods.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The earliest fossil evidence of terrestrial animal activity is from the Ordovician, approximately 450 million years ago (Ma). However, there are earlier animal fossils, and most molecular clocks suggest a deep origin of animal phyla in the Precambrian, leaving open the possibility that animals colonized land much earlier than the Ordovician. To further investigate the time of colonization of land by animals, we sequenced two nuclear genes, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and enolase, in representative arthropods and conducted phylogenetic and molecular clock analyses of those and other available DNA and protein sequence data. To assess the robustness of animal molecular clocks, we estimated the deuterostome-arthropod divergence using the arthropod fossil record

SUBMITTER: Pisani D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC333434 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature