Data from: Morphological disparity in theropod jaws: comparing discrete characters and geometric morphometrics

Schaeffer, Joep, University of Bristol

Benton, Michael J., University of Bristol, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4323-1824

Rayfield, Emily J., University of Bristol

Stubbs, Thomas L., University of Bristol

earth-enquiries@bristol.ac.uk, Mike.Benton@bristol.ac.uk, e.rayfield@bristol.ac.uk, tom.stubbs@bristol.ac.uk

Published Nov 05, 2019 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.70rk2cf

Cite this dataset

Schaeffer, Joep; Benton, Michael J.; Rayfield, Emily J.; Stubbs, Thomas L. (2019). Data from: Morphological disparity in theropod jaws: comparing discrete characters and geometric morphometrics [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.70rk2cf

Abstract

Disparity, the diversity of form and function of organisms, is frequently measured, and can be assessed from cladistic or phenetic characters, and from discrete characters or continuous characters such as landmarks, outlines, or ratios. But do these different methods of assessing disparity provide comparable results? Here we provide a large-scale test in which character sets are standardized for anatomical-functional comparability, and compare three methods of capturing morphological disparity (discrete characters, morphometric outlines and geometric morphometric landmarks). We use coelurosaurian dinosaur mandibles as our case study. We find that all methods correlate significantly with each other and capture similar patterns of morphological variation. The correlation is strongest between the two morphometric methods, and weaker between the morphometric methods and the discrete characters. When expanding the scope of sampling for all three analyses to include all possible taxa results are consistent with a reduced standardized sample across all three measures. Our results from all methods confirm that Maniraptoriformes had the highest disparity of all coelurosaurians, and omnivores and herbivores had higher disparity than carnivores.

Usage notes

Supplement

Supplementary tables and figures

Supplementary_file_1

Landmark data file containing raw data on theropod mandibles, in tps format.

Supplementary_table_1

Table of mandible-related cladistic characters for theropods, in nexus format.

Supplementary_table_8

Coordinates of all taxa in PCA hyperspace.

Supplementary_table_1

Taxon-character matrix in Nexus format.

Supplement

Supplementary methods, figures, and tables.

Supplementary_table_2

Taxon-character matrix in Nexus format.

Supplementary_table_7

Mandible landmark data in Excel format.

Supplementary_file_1_raw_landmarks

Landmark data in tps format.

Supplementary_file_2_GPA_landmarks

Landmark data in tps format.

Supplementary_file_3_raw_landmarks_full_sample

Landmark data in tps format.

Supplementary_file_4_GPA_landmarks_full_sample

Landmark data in tps format.

simulations

Zip file of a folder containing all the input and output files for the simulations to identify a range of variation.