Data from: Phylogeny and divergence times of lemurs inferred with recent and ancient fossils in the tree

Paleontological and neontological systematics seek to answer evolutionary
questions with different data sets. Phylogenies inferred for combined
extant and extinct taxa provide novel insights into the evolutionary
history of life. Primates have an extensive, diverse fossil record and
molecular data for living and extinct taxa are rapidly becoming available.
We used two models to infer the phylogeny and divergence times for living
and fossil primates, the tip-dating (TD) and fossilized birth–death
process (FBD). We collected new morphological data, especially on the
living and extinct endemic lemurs of Madagascar. We combined the
morphological data with published DNA sequences to infer near-complete
(88% of lemurs) time-calibrated phylogenies. The results suggest that
primates originated around the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary, slightly
earlier than indicated by the fossil record and later than previously
inferred from molecular data alone. We infer novel relationships among
extinct lemurs, and strong support for relationships that were previously
unresolved. Dates inferred with TD were significantly older than those
inferred with FBD, most likely related to an assumption of a uniform
branching process in the TD compared with a birth–death process assumed in
the FBD. This is the first study to combine morphological and DNA sequence
data from extinct and extant primates to infer evolutionary relationships
and divergence times, and our results shed new light on the tempo of lemur
evolution and the efficacy of combined phylogenetic analyses.