Body size evolution through shifting climatic conditions in Mesozoic dinosaurs

Wilson, L. N., Gardner, J. D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5790-632X, Wilson, J. P., Farnsworth, A., Valdes, P., Perry, Z. R., Druckenmiller, P. S., Erickson, G. M. and Organ, C. L. (2026) Body size evolution through shifting climatic conditions in Mesozoic dinosaurs. Palaeontology, 69 (3). e70068. ISSN 1475-4983 doi: 10.1111/pala.70068

Abstract/Summary

Body size evolution is commonly associated with climate change. For example, birds and mammals have been found to decrease in size with anthropogenic global warming. Recent studies have inferred distinct shifts in climatic niche preferences among the three major dinosaur clades. Following the Early Jurassic Toarcian extinction event (Jenkyns Event), sauropods increasingly occupied warmer and drier environments, while theropods shifted toward cooler and wetter climates. Ornithischians showed a similar pattern to theropods, but much later, coinciding with the Late Cretaceous Cenomanian/Turonian boundary. We apply phylogenetic comparative methods to test whether shifts in preferred climatic niches are coupled with dinosaur body size evolution. We find no support for a correlation between body size and local palaeotemperature, seasonality, or mean annual precipitation (MAP) among species in any dinosaur clade, before or after shifts in preferred climatic niches. With this original dataset, we find that larger eusauropod body sizes are weakly correlated with lower MAP after the Jenkyns Event. However, this trend is not recovered when using a larger and more recent dataset of eusauropods, demonstrating that the strength of such climate–size relationships is subject to sampling intensity. Our findings highlight the complex role of climate on body size evolution and how the detection of macroevolutionary patterns is influenced by sample size.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/130988
Identification Number/DOI	10.1111/pala.70068
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Biological Sciences > Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Uncontrolled Keywords	dinosaur, Mesozoic, palaeoclimate, biogeography, thermophysiology, body size
Publisher	Wiley
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