Qualitative approaches reveal parallelism of mandibular function in therian carnivores

The evolution of the mandible in mammalian carnivores is influenced by ecological demands that have changed over their phylogenetic history.  We combined geometric morphometrics and biomechanical analysis (including beam analysis and finite element analysis or FEA) to assess the interaction between form and function as the mandible has adapted independently to carnivorous diets in therian clades, including Metatheria, Mesonychia, “Creodonta,” and Carnivoramorpha. Our goal was to determine the relative contributions of mechanical advantage, mandibular force or resistance to bending and torsion, to the evolution of mandibular shape in these groups, and to determine whether they produce differential rates of shape evolution in the horizontal and ascending rami, which respectively are the tooth-bearing and muscle-loading parts of the structure.
We found that the ascending ramus has higher rates of evolution than the horizontal ramus, making it the more rapidly evolving portion of the m..., , # Qualitative approaches reveal parallelism of mandibular function in therian carnivores

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.d7wm37qd7](10.5061/dryad.d7wm37qd7)

## Description of the data and file structure

* Supplementary_Table_1(1).csv contains all the specimens used in this study, their categorical information (i.e., taxonomic group and dietary ecology), and functional morphological/biomechanical measurements that were used in data analyses. Measurements include mandible length (measured in centimeters), surface area (measured in cm^2^), volume (measured in cm^3^), dorosventral bending force (DBF) which is a ratio, labiolingual bending force (LBF) which is a ratio, relative mandibular force (RMF) which is a ratio, mechanical advantage (MA) which is ratio between lever arms between either the masseter or temporalis muscle in-levers and either the canine or carnassial out-levers, stress (measured in pascals) for loads of scaled 100 N (newtons) on the canine or the canrassial, and the strain...,