Data from: Evolutionary shifts in mustelid (Mustelidae: Carnivora) cranial shape, body size, and body shape coincides with the Mid-Miocene Climate Transition

Environmental changes can lead to evolutionary shifts in phenotypic
traits, which in turn facilitate exploitation of novel adaptive landscapes
and lineage diversification. The global cooling, increased aridity, and
expansion of open grasslands during the past 50 million years are prime
examples of new adaptive landscapes that spurred lineage and
ecomorphological diversity of several mammalian lineages such as rodents
and large herbivorous megafauna. However, whether these environmental
changes facilitated evolutionary shifts in small to mid-sized predator
morphology is unknown. Here, I used a complete cranial and body
morphological dataset to examine the timing of evolutionary shifts in
cranial shape, body size, and body shape within extant mustelids (martens,
otters, polecats, and weasels) during the climatic and environmental
changes of the Cenozoic. I found that evolutionary shifts in all three
traits occurred within extant mustelid subclades just after the onset of
the Mid-Miocene Climate Transition. These mustelid subclades first shifted
towards more elongate body plans followed by concurrent shifts towards
smaller body sizes and more robust crania. I hypothesize that these
cranial and body morphological shifts enabled mustelids to exploit novel
adaptive zones associated with the climatic and environmental changes of
the Mid to Late Miocene, which facilitated significant increases in clade
carrying capacity.