Data from: Morphological disparity in theropod jaws: comparing discrete characters and geometric morphometrics

Disparity, the diversity of form and function of organisms, is frequently
measured, and can be assessed from cladistic or phenetic characters, and
from discrete characters or continuous characters such as landmarks,
outlines, or ratios. But do these different methods of assessing disparity
provide comparable results? Here we provide a large-scale test in which
character sets are standardized for anatomical-functional comparability,
and compare three methods of capturing morphological disparity (discrete
characters, morphometric outlines and geometric morphometric landmarks).
We use coelurosaurian dinosaur mandibles as our case study. We find that
all methods correlate significantly with each other and capture similar
patterns of morphological variation. The correlation is strongest between
the two morphometric methods, and weaker between the morphometric methods
and the discrete characters. When expanding the scope of sampling for all
three analyses to include all possible taxa results are consistent with a
reduced standardized sample across all three measures. Our results from
all methods confirm that Maniraptoriformes had the highest disparity of
all coelurosaurians, and omnivores and herbivores had higher disparity
than carnivores.