Morphological diversification is measured by dental disparity, using the mean pairwise dissimilarity among species. I present a method developed to describe the entire dentition of the Carnivoramorpha and other mammalian meat eaters (Creodonta). Using the dentition permits ecological inferences to be made, because teeth and diet are closely related.
In this paper I use dentition to document the pattern of morphological and taxonomic diversification of Carnivoramorpha and mammalian meat eaters in North America.
However, morphological diversification-beyond counting taxa-can provide a very different view of a clade's evolutionary history and allows the investigation of patterns and timing of morphological evolution. The evolutionary history of a clade has traditionally been studied through phylogenetics, and taxonomic diversity has been used as a crude proxy for morphological diversity.
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