According
to the most recent Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group (PPG), eupolypods, or eupolypod
ferns, are the most differentiated and diversified of all major lineages of ferns, accounting for more
than half of extant fern diversity. However, the evolutionary history of
eupolypods remains incompletely understood, and conflicting ideas and scenarios
exist in the literature about many aspects of this history. Due to a scarce
fossil record, the diversification time of eupolypods mainly inferred from
molecular dating approaches. Currently, there are two molecular dating results:
the diversification of eupolypods occurred either in the Late Cretaceous or as
early as in the Jurassic. This study uses the Bayesian tip-dating approach for
the first time to infer the diversification time for eupolypods.
Our analyses support the Jurassic diversification for eupolypods. The age
estimations for the diversifications of the whole clade and one of its two
subclades (the eupolypods II) are both in the Jurassic, which adds to the
growing body of data on a much earlier diversification of Polypodiales in the
Mesozoic than previously suspected.
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