MESOZOIC MARINE REPTILE DISPARITY
those seen in Mesozoic marine reptiles; most were initiated by ecological opportunity and occurred in comparable environmental settings (Pyenson et al. 2014).Thus far,most attention has focused on the diversification of cetaceans. Open niche space has been proposed as the main driving force behind the Eocene archaeocete (stem cetacean) radiation (Gingerich 2003). Steeman et al. (2009) and Slater et al. (2010) both focused on the tempo of the neocete (crown cetacean) radiation in a quantitative framework anddiscoveredno evidencefor earlyrapid lineage diversification in the Oligocene. Importantly, however, Slater et al. (2010) did present strong evidence for an early burst of body-size evolution in neocetes associated with
dietary differentiation, consistent with a niche- filling adaptive radiation model. Therefore, there is some evidence that empty ecospace was not just a driver for the adaptive radiations of Trias- sic ichthyosaurs and sauropterygians but also important in the ecological ascent of cetaceans. Future studies may benefit from incorporating both stem and crown cetaceans with fossil data within the same framework to facilitate a broader comparison of trends across secondarily marine tetrapods through their entire durations.
Acknowledgments This project was funded by the Natural
Environment Research Council (Ph.D. grant NE/J500033/1 to T.L.S. and M.J.B.). We thank Heinz Furrer,Rainer Schoch, andMarkusMoser for providing access to specimens and assistance during collection visits. We are very grateful to Sven Sachs, Benjamin Moon, Judyth Sassoon, Benjamin Kear, Silvio Renesto, James Neenan, Davide Foffa, Mike Polcyn, Da-yong Jiang, William Simpson, Jahn Hornung, CarlMehling, Anne Schulp, and Jan Ove R. Ebbestad for providing photographs of specimens. Many thanks also to Marcello Ruta, Phil Anderson, and Emily Rayfield for methodological advice and to two reviewers for helpful suggestions and comments. Finally, we thank the Paleobiol- ogy Patrons Fund for financial support.
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