CarniFOSS: A database of the body mass of fossil carnivores

Motivation: Body mass is one of the most important determinants of animal ecology. Unlike other important traits it is also readily inferable from fossils and it is therefore one of the only traits that can be directly analyzed and compared between fossil and contemporary communities. Despite this, no comprehensive database of the body mass of larger clades of extinct species exists. Analysis of fossils has therefore been restricted to small clades or to smaller, potentially biased, subsets of species. We here describe CarniFoss, an open-access database of body masses of all 1322 extinct species of non-pinniped Carnivoramorpha and two related extinct groups of carnivorous mammals, Hyaenodonta, and Oxyaenida.

Main types of variables contained: We gathered lengths of teeth of fossil and extant species and body mass for extant species and a few of the best-known fossil species. Following this we estimated body mass for all species through phylogenetic imputation.

Spatial location and...

研究背景：体重是决定动物生态学特征的最重要因素之一。与其他重要性状不同，体重可通过化石便捷推断，因此它是唯一可直接在化石群落与现生生物群落间开展分析与对比的性状之一。尽管如此，目前尚无针对大型演化支灭绝物种体重的综合数据库，因此化石相关分析只能局限于小型演化支，或是样本量较小、可能存在偏倚的物种子集。本研究介绍了CarniFoss数据库：这是一个开放获取的数据库，收录了非鳍足类食肉形类（Carnivoramorpha）的全部1322个灭绝物种，以及两个相关的已灭绝食肉哺乳类群——鬣齿兽目（Hyaenodonta）和牛鬣兽目（Oxyaenida）的体重数据。
包含的主要变量类型：我们收集了化石物种与现生物种的牙齿长度数据，以及现生物种与部分知名化石物种的体重数据。随后，我们通过系统发育插补法，为所有物种估算了体重数据。
空间位置及……