Data from: Explosive diversification of marine fishes at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary

The Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K–Pg) mass extinction is linked to the rapid
emergence of ecologically divergent higher taxa (for example, families and
orders) across terrestrial vertebrates, but its impact on the
diversification of marine vertebrates is less clear. Spiny-rayed fishes
(Acanthomorpha) provide an ideal system for exploring the effects of the
K–Pg on fish diversification, yet despite decades of morphological and
molecular phylogenetic efforts, resolution of both early diverging
lineages and enormously diverse subclades remains problematic. Recent
multilocus studies have provided the first resolved phylogenetic backbone
for acanthomorphs and suggested novel relationships among major lineages.
However, these new relationships and associated timescales have not been
interrogated using phylogenomic approaches. Here, we use targeted
enrichment of >1,000 ultraconserved elements in conjunction with a
divergence time analysis to resolve relationships among 120 major
acanthomorph lineages and provide a new timescale for acanthomorph
radiation. Our results include a well-supported topology that strongly
resolves relationships along the acanthomorph backbone and the recovery of
several new relationships within six major percomorph subclades.
Divergence time analyses also reveal that crown ages for five of these
subclades, and for the bulk of the species diversity in the sixth,
coincide with the K–Pg boundary, with divergences between anatomically and
ecologically distinctive suprafamilial clades concentrated in the first 10
million years of the Cenozoic.