Data from: Microanatomy of the amniote femur and inference of lifestyle in limbed vertebrates

The femoral microanatomy of 155 species of extant amniotes (57 species of mammals, 15 species of turtles, 56 species of lepidosaurs, and 27 species of birds) of known lifestyle is studied to demonstrate a possible link between some basic parameters of bone structure and specific lifestyles, as well as phylogenetic relationships between taxa. Squared change parsimony with random taxon reshuffling and pairwise comparisons reveal that most compactness and size parameters exhibit both phylogenetic and ecological signals. A discriminant analysis produces several inference models, including a ternary model (aquatic, amphibious, terrestrial) that yield the correct lifestyle in 88% of the cases. These models are used to infer the lifestyle of three extinct Permian temnospondyls: Eryops megacephalus, Acheloma dunni, and Trimerorhachis insignis.Quémeneur et al. SOM 1Excel file about taxa, lifestyle, section size, and bibliographic information.Quémeneur et al. R1 SOM 1.xlsQuemeneur et al. SOM 2Mesquite Nexus file including taxa, habitat and microanatomical data, and time-calibrated trees.Quémeneur et al. SOM 3Tree in pdf format showing the comparative dataset.Quémeneur et al. SOM 3.pdfQuémeneur et al. SOM 4Paleobiological inference models in an Excel workbok. There are two models, one binary and one ternary, each on its sheet. Insert the data about size and microanatomy, and the inferred lifestyle appears.Quémeneur et al. SOM 4.xl