Data from: Tuatara and a new morphometric dataset for Rhynchocephalia: comments on Herrera‐Flores et al

It has recently been suggested that a 'living fossil' can be identified because it is both morphologically conservative and exhibits a significantly slower rate of morphological evolution compared to related lineages (Herrera-Flores et al. 2017). As an exemplar, variation among known rhynchocephalians was investigated, and it was concluded that the New Zealand tuatara Sphenodon punctatus Gray, 1831 is a living fossil species (Herrera-Flores et al. 2017). In addition to the dubious biological meaning and basis of describing a 'living fossil' (Grandcolas et al. 2014; Grandcolas and Trewick 2016), we find major flaws in the methods used to investigate morphological conservatism among rhynchocephalians. To assist future studies of dentary shape variation among rhynchocephalians and morphological conservatism, we provide a geometric morphometric dataset for tuatara.Tutara samplingPhotographic and digitisation sampling of tuatara dentary bones for this study. File includes provenance and museum collection information.tuatara-sampling.xlsxTuatara morphometric datasetProcrustes coordinates and centroid size values for digitised tuatara dentary bones. File can be easily modified (instructions included) for conversion into .csv file for input into the geometric morphometric software MorphoJ. File includes keys for the classifier strings used in specimen IDs to classify specimens into groups (e.g. regions, left or right, living or fossil).tuatara-morpho-dataset.xlsxSupporting MaterialSupporting Tables and FiguresSUPPORTING.docxSupplementary Figure 1Supplementary Figure 1SUPFIG1.tifSupplementary Figure 2Supplementary Figure 2SUPFIG2.tifSupplementary Figure 3Supplementary Figure 3SUPFIG3.tifSupplementary Figure 4Supplementary Figure 4SUPFIG4.tifSupplementary Table 1Supplementary Table 1SUPTABLE1.doc