The evolution of femoral morphology in giant non-avian theropod dinosaurs

Theropods are obligate bipedal dinosaurs that appeared 230 million years ago and are still extant as birds. Their history is characterized by extreme variations in body mass, with gigantism evolving convergently between many lineages. However, no quantification of hindlimb functional morphology has shown if these body mass increases led to similar specializations between distinct lineages. Here we studied femoral shape variation across 41 species of theropods (n= 68 specimens) using a high-density 3D geometric morphometric approach. We demonstrated that the heaviest theropods evolved wider epiphyses and a more distally located fourth trochanter, as previously demonstrated in early archosaurs, along with an upturned femoral head and a mediodistal crest that extended proximally along the shaft. Phylogenetically informed analyses highlighted that these traits evolved convergently within six major theropod lineages, regardless of their maximum body mass. Conversely, the most gracile femora ..., , , # The evolution of femoral morphology in giant non-avian theropod dinosaurs

Give a brief summary of dataset contents, contextualized in experimental procedures and results.

This dataset contains :

1\) Pintore_etal_2024-Supplementary_figures_and_tables.docx — A text document including Supplementary Figures and Supplementary Tables.

2\) Pintore_et_al_2024-Branch_lengths_sensitivity_analysis.xlsx — An Excel sheet including a sensitivity analysis comparing phylogenetically based statistical analyses from tree with equal vs time-calibrated branch length.

3\) Pintore_et_al_2024-Supporting_Information_sensitivity_analysis.docx — A text document including a discussion of the sensitivity analysis comparing the impact of using different types of branch length computation

## Description of the data and file structure

1\) Figure S1 illustrates the sensitivity analyses of variation between logMDC (Minimal Circumference of the femoral Diaphysis) and estimated body masses; Figure S2 displays ...