Application of landmark morphometrics to skulls representing the orders of living mammals

摘要: Statistical analyses of geometric morphometric data have been generally restricted to the Euclidean space tangent curved shape space. This approach is based on knowledge that such an approximation does not affect statistical and biological conclusions, when differences among spec- imens' shapes are too large. We examined wide variation within vertebrate class Mammalia determine by comparing Procrustes distances in Kendall 53 mammal skulls articulated jaws be- longing almost all living orders. Previous studies relatively low tax- onomic levels, implying a narrower range shapes. Thirty-five three-dimensional (3D) landmarks sagittal plane right side each specimen were digitized using MicroScribe 3DX. between speci- mens compared program TPSSMALL (Rohlf, 1998b). The correlations these always greater than 0.99. Lower jaw brain subsets gave similar results, while face subset had more scatter, but nearly same correlation. 3D shapes, as summarized landmarks, clustered dendrogram was currently hy- pothesized phylogeny. also point out from landmark morphometrics appropriate morphological molecular for cladistic analysis.