Publications by authors named "Theodor Obada"
Article Synopsis
- Pachyosteosclerosis is a condition that leads to the development of dense and bulky bones, typically seen in early aquatic animals like whales and dolphins, but usually decreases as their swimming ability improves.
- In the Miocene era, this condition re-emerged in seals, dolphins, and whales from the Paratethys Sea due to changes in bone remodeling during a period of hypersaline conditions.
- The presence of dense bones likely served as ballast, helping these animals swim more efficiently in the denser waters, and from this region, the trait spread eastward, becoming prominent in late Miocene whale species.
As the largest and among the most behaviourally complex extant terrestrial mammals, proboscideans (elephants and their extinct relatives) are iconic representatives of the modern megafauna. The timing of the evolution of large brain size and above average encephalization quotient remains poorly understood due to the paucity of described endocranial casts. Here we created the most complete dataset on proboscidean endocranial capacity and analysed it using phylogenetic comparative methods and ancestral character states reconstruction using maximum likelihood.
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