Dee's partner, Claire, uses the specimens to study the evolutionary arms-race between the cuckoo finch, a parasite, and the prinias and cisticolas in whose nests it lays its eggs.
Together, the two specimens led researchers to redescribe the evolutionary tree of sauropods, and propose a new theory of how they spread across the ancient megacontinent of Gondwana, which joined Australia, Africa, Antarctica and South America.
This research exemplifies how informative DNA mini-barcodes might, in combination with an efficient extraction methodology, be used to identify the evolutionary origin of museum specimens.
The evolutionary analysis, which compared the specimens with similar ones in South America, meant there was a small window between 100m and 105m years ago when an ancestor of the two dinosaurs must have crossed over land from South America, through Antarctica, to Australia.
Voucher specimens from representative rodents have been deposited at the Evolutionary Ecology group, University of Antwerp, and are available from the authors on request.
The discovery of Rajasaurus could lead to additional information on the evolutionary relationships of abelisaurs, since previously described specimens from India were mainly isolated bones.
To analyse the evolutionary background of different reticulation forms we utilised two A. nevadensis specimens and 30 A. bipustulatus specimens representing the reticulation pattern of 16 bipustulatus, two kiesenwetterii, three falcozi, one dolomitanus, one pyrenaeus and seven solieri forms.
The cytb topology reflected the geographic origin of the specimens, and the five main evolutionary lineages of Fink et al. [33] and Heckel et al. [34] were found: W (France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain), F (Germany), I (Switzerland, Italy), E (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Finland) and C (France, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark).
Modern molecular approaches can be used with historical specimens to confirm the presence of variola or another orthopoxvirus and elucidate the evolutionary history of the virus.
