Dataset Information

Convergent evolution of a mobile bony tongue in flighted dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

ABSTRACT: The tongue, with fleshy, muscular, and bony components, is an innovation of the earliest land-dwelling vertebrates with key functions in both feeding and respiration. Here, we bring together evidence from preserved hyoid elements from dinosaurs and outgroup archosaurs, including pterosaurs, with enhanced contrast x-ray computed tomography data from extant taxa. Midline ossification is a key component of the origin of an avian hyoid. The elaboration of the avian tongue includes the evolution of multiple novel midline hyoid bones and a larynx suspended caudal to these midline elements. While variable in dentition and skull shape, most bird-line archosaurs show a simple hyoid structure. Bony, or well-mineralized, hyoid structures in dinosaurs show limited modification in response to dietary shifts and across significant changes in body-size. In Dinosauria, at least one such narrow, midline element is variably mineralized in some basal paravian theropods. Only in derived ornithischians, pterosaurs and birds is further significant hyoid elaboration recorded. Furthermore, only in the latter two taxa does the bony tongue structure include elongation of paired hyobranchial elements that have been associated in functional studies with hyolingual mobility. Pterosaurs and enantiornithine birds achieve similar elongation and inferred mobility via elongation of ceratobranchial elements while within ornithurine birds, including living Aves, ossified and separate paired epibranchial elements (caudal to the ceratobranchials) confer an increase in hyobranchial length. The mobile tongues seen in living birds may be present in other flighted archosaurs showing a similar elongation. Shifts from hypercarnivory to more diverse feeding ecologies and diets, with the evolution of novel locomotor strategies like flight, may explain the evolution of more complex tongue function.

SUBMITTER: Li Z

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6010247 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Convergent evolution of a mobile bony tongue in flighted dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

Li Zhiheng Z Zhou Zhonghe Z Clarke Julia A JA

PloS one 20180620 6

The tongue, with fleshy, muscular, and bony components, is an innovation of the earliest land-dwelling vertebrates with key functions in both feeding and respiration. Here, we bring together evidence from preserved hyoid elements from dinosaurs and outgroup archosaurs, including pterosaurs, with enhanced contrast x-ray computed tomography data from extant taxa. Midline ossification is a key component of the origin of an avian hyoid. The elaboration of the avian tongue includes the evolution of m ...[more]

PMID: 29924798

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundTooth replacement rate can be calculated in extinct animals by counting incremental lines of deposition in tooth dentin. Calculating this rate in several taxa allows for the study of the evolution of tooth replacement rate. Sauropod dinosaurs, the largest terrestrial animals that ever evolved, exhibited a diversity of tooth sizes and shapes, but little is known about their tooth replacement rates.Methodology/principal findingsWe present tooth replacement rate, formation time, crown volume, total dentition volume, and enamel thickness for two coexisting but distantly related and morphologically disparate sauropod dinosaurs Camarasaurus and Diplodocus. Individual tooth formation time was determined by counting daily incremental lines in dentin. Tooth replacement rate is calculated as the difference between the number of days recorded in successive replacement teeth. Each tooth family in Camarasaurus has a maximum of three replacement teeth, whereas each Diplodocus tooth family has up to five. Tooth formation times are about 1.7 times longer in Camarasaurus than in Diplodocus (315 vs. 185 days). Average tooth replacement rate in Camarasaurus is about one tooth every 62 days versus about one tooth every 35 days in Diplodocus. Despite slower tooth replacement rates in Camarasaurus, the volumetric rate of Camarasaurus tooth replacement is 10 times faster than in Diplodocus because of its substantially greater tooth volumes. A novel method to estimate replacement rate was developed and applied to several other sauropodomorphs that we were not able to thin section.Conclusions/significanceDifferences in tooth replacement rate among sauropodomorphs likely reflect disparate feeding strategies and/or food choices, which would have facilitated the coexistence of these gigantic herbivores in one ecosystem. Early neosauropods are characterized by high tooth replacement rates (despite their large tooth size), and derived titanosaurs and diplodocoids independently evolved the highest known tooth replacement rates among archosaurs.

Dataset Information

Convergent evolution of a mobile bony tongue in flighted dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

Publications

Convergent evolution of a mobile bony tongue in flighted dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets