A genomic timescale for placental mammal evolution
Foley, Nicole M ; Mason, Victor C ; Harris, Andrew J ; Bredemeyer, Kevin R ; Damas, Joana ; Lewin, Harris A ; Eizirik, Eduardo ; Gatesy, John ; Karlsson, Elinor K ; Lindblad-Toh, Kerstin ... show 2 more
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Abstract
The precise pattern and timing of speciation events that gave rise to all living placental mammals remain controversial. We provide a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of genetic variation across an alignment of 241 placental mammal genome assemblies, addressing prior concerns regarding limited genomic sampling across species. We compared neutral genome-wide phylogenomic signals using concatenation and coalescent-based approaches, interrogated phylogenetic variation across chromosomes, and analyzed extensive catalogs of structural variants. Interordinal relationships exhibit relatively low rates of phylogenomic conflict across diverse datasets and analytical methods. Conversely, X-chromosome versus autosome conflicts characterize multiple independent clades that radiated during the Cenozoic. Genomic time trees reveal an accumulation of cladogenic events before and immediately after the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, implying important roles for Cretaceous continental vicariance and the K-Pg extinction in the placental radiation.
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Foley NM, Mason VC, Harris AJ, Bredemeyer KR, Damas J, Lewin HA, Eizirik E, Gatesy J, Karlsson EK, Lindblad-Toh K; Zoonomia Consortium‡; Springer MS, Murphy WJ. A genomic timescale for placental mammal evolution. Science. 2023 Apr 28;380(6643):eabl8189. doi: 10.1126/science.abl8189. Epub 2023 Apr 28. PMID: 37104581; PMCID: PMC10233747.