293
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    15
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Mitogenomic analyses place the gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) on the crocodile tree and provide pre-K/T divergence times for most crocodilians.

      Journal of Molecular Evolution
      Alligators and Crocodiles, classification, genetics, Amino Acid Sequence, Animals, DNA, Mitochondrial, Genome, Phylogeny, Time Factors

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Based on morphological analyses, extant members of the order Crocodylia are divided into three families, Alligatoridae, Crocodylidae, and Gavialidae. Gavialidae includes one species, the gharial, Gavialis gangeticus. In this study we have examined crocodilian relationships in phylogenetic analyses of seven mitochondrial genomes that have been sequenced in their entirety. The analyses did not support the morphologically acknowledged separate position of the gharial in the crocodilian tree. Instead the gharial joined the false gharial (Tomistoma schlegelii) on a common branch that was shown to constitute a sister group to traditional Crocodylidae (less Tomistoma). Thus, the analyses suggest the recognition of only two Crocodylia families, Alligatoridae and Crocodylidae, with the latter encompassing traditional Crocodylidae plus Gavialis/Tomistoma. A molecular dating of the divergence between Alligatoridae and Crocodylidae suggests that this basal split among recent crocodilians took place approximately 140 million years before present, at the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary. The results suggest that at least five crocodilian lineages survived the mass extinction at the KT boundary.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          16211427
          10.1007/s00239-004-0336-9

          Chemistry
          Alligators and Crocodiles,classification,genetics,Amino Acid Sequence,Animals,DNA, Mitochondrial,Genome,Phylogeny,Time Factors

          Comments

          Comment on this article