Academic publications — and explanations
Developmental origin underlies evolutionary rate variation across the placental skull
A Goswami, E Noirault, EJ Coombs, J Clavel, AC Fabre, TJD Halliday, M Churchill, A Curtis, A Watanabe, NB Simmons, BL Beatty, JH Geisler, DL Fox, RN Felice (2023) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378: 20220083
This paper deals with the differences in what parts of the skull can tell us regarding phylogeny (relationships), allometry (shape changes during growth) and ecology (lifestyle), and looking at rate variation in different groups of mammals. We report a difference between rates of evolution in neural crest vs mesoderm derived parts of the skull, among other interesting patterns.
Attenuated evolution of mammals through the Cenozoic
A Goswami, E Noirault, EJ Coombs, J Clavel, AC Fabre, TJD Halliday, M Churchill, A Curtis, A Watanabe, NB Simmons, BL Beatty, JH Geisler, DL Fox, RN Felice (2022) Science, 378: p377-383
In this paper, we use a dataset of three-dimensional scans of skulls of fossil and living mammals to work out how rapidly mammal skull shape has changed over different branches of the tree of life and at different times. We find that there is a long-term slowing down of rates of evolution, that ancestral skull shapes are reconstructed very similarly in different groups, and that there are bursts of innovation associated with rapid diversification. I was responsible for the putting together of the timed trees.
First definitive abelisaurid theropod from the Late Cretaceous of Northwestern Argentina
FL Agnolin, MA Cerroni, A Scanferla, A Goswami, A Paulina-Carabajal, TJD Halliday, AR Cuff, S Reuil (2021) Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, e2002348
In this paper, we describe the braincase of an abelisaurid dinosaur that was discovered during fieldwork in north-western Argentina. It is one of the smallest abelisaurids known, and the Argentinian cohort of our authors decided to name it Guemesia.
The earliest-published recognition of a trace fossil and its producer
TJD Halliday (2021) Ichnos, p1-8
In this paper, I show how a French potter named Bernard Palissy was the first (that we know of) to publish an accurate description of fossilised behaviour. Specifically, a hole bored by a rock-dwelling clam called a piddock. Palissy lived and died in the 16th century, at a time when fossils were not widely recognised as being biological, and his description predates the previous earliest known publication, that of Ulisse Aldrovandi, by several decades.
Leaving Gondwana: the changing position of the Indian subcontinent in the global faunal network
TJD Halliday, PA Holroyd, E Gheerbrant, GVR Prasad, A Scanferla, RMD Beck, DW Krause, A Goswami (2020) Biological Consequences of Plate Tectonics, p227-249
In this paper, we look at all the vertebrate-bearing localities from the Late Cretaceous and Palaeogene, and use network methods to work out how similar the species make-up of each place is. In particular, we are interested in how India changes from being associated with other southern continents like South America and Africa to being associated with Asia.
Rapid morphological evolution in placental mammals post-dates the origin of the crown group
TJD Halliday, M dos Reis, AU Tamuri, H Ferguson-Gow, Z Yang, A Goswami (2019) Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286, 20182418
Mammal evolution has a couple of big controversies at the moment. One concerns the fact that despite mounting evidence for the origin of placental mammals at some point in the Cretaceous, there has been no unequivocal fossil of a Cretaceous placental mammal. Here, we show that rates of anatomical evolution were so slow relative to genetic evolution during the initial diversification of mammals that the data are at least consistent with the idea that there could be cryptic placental diversity among fossils we already have, and we may never be able to separate them.
Faunal similarity in Madagascan and south Indian Late Cretaceous vertebrate faunas
TJD Halliday, GVR Prasad, A Goswami (2017) Palaeo-3, 468, p70-75
India is an interesting landmass. During the Late Cretaceous, it was an island about halfway between Africa and Asia. Here, we show that the southern Cretaceous faunas of Tamil Nadu are biologically more similar to the Cretaceous fauna of Madagascar than to the Cretaceous fauna of north-central India.
Resolving the relationships of Paleocene placental mammals
TJD Halliday, P Upchurch, A Goswami (2017) Biological Reviews, 92, p521-550
This paper is the biggest family tree of placental mammals to date that includes large numbers of extinct mammals from the Paleocene epoch, just after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. It helps … a bit … to decipher some of the relationships among a particularly problematic group known as the “condylarths”, but there are many issues still to be resolved. It’s also a really thorough review of Paleocene placental diversity.
Completeness of the eutherian mammal fossil record and implications for reconstructing mammal evolution through the Cretaceous/Paleogene mass extinction
TW Davies, MA Bell, A Goswami, TJD Halliday (2017) Paleobiology
Here, we wanted to test the idea that anatomical incompleteness of fossils might be the cause of the discrepancy between fossil and genetic evidence. We found that there was no evidence that Cretaceous eutherians were any less anatomically complete than those in the Cenozoic, rejecting that idea.
The impact of phylogenetic dating method on interpreting trait evolution: a case study of Cretaceous-Palaeogene eutherian body-size evolution
TJD Halliday, A Goswami (2016) Biology Letters, 12, 20160051
A paper showing that choice of dating method on the same phylogenetic data can lead to wildly different downstream interpretations about what this means biologically. Caution to be noted.
New record of Egertonia (Elopiformes, Phyllodontidae) from the Late Cretaceous of South India
TJD Halliday, AR Cuff, GVR Prasad, MS Thanglemmoi, A Goswami (2016), Papers in Palaeontology, 2, p287-294
Andrew Cuff picked up two interesting fossil fish toothplates while on fieldwork in South India. Here, we describe them, the first record of the taxon from India.
Eutherian morphological disparity across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction
TJD Halliday, A Goswami (2016) Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 118, p152-168
Eutherians experienced elevated evolutionary rates in the immediate aftermath of the Cretaceous-Palaeogene mass extinction
TJD Halliday, P Upchurch, A Goswami (2016) Proceedings of the Royal Society B,
A re-evaluation of goniopholidid crocodylomorph material from Central Asia: biogeographic and phylogenetic implications
TJD Halliday, MB de Andrade, MJ Benton, MB Efimov (2013) Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 60, p291-312
Testing the inhibitory cascade model in Mesozoic and Cenozoic mammaliaforms
TJD Halliday, A Goswami (2013) BMC Evolutionary Biology, 13, 79