Papers I have Read in the Last Two Weeks

Fry, B. G. and Wuster, W, 2004, Assembling an Arsenal: Origin and Evolution of Snake Venom Proteome Inferred from Phylogentic Analysis of Toxin Sequences. Mol. Biol. Evol. 21(5):870-883. Background for a post I was thinking about doing, but Zimmer beat me to it. May still do the post anyway.

Vidal, N. and Hedges, S. B., 2005, The Phylogeny of Squamate Reptiles (Lizards, Snakes, and Amphisbaenians) inferred from Nine Nuclear Protein-Coding Genes. C. R. Biologies 328:1000-1008. See above.

Bleiweiss, Robert, 1998, Slow Rate of Molecular Evolution in High-Elevation Hummingbirds. PNAS 95:612-616 Background for a post I'm working on.

Martin, A. P., Palumbi, S. R., 1993, Body Size, Metabolic Rate, Generation Time, and the Molecular Clock. PNAS 90:4087-4091. Same as the previous article, although it may be awhile before I post it. I'm thinking of going out and buying several books on the subject as I'm really developing an interest in the effects of body size, etc, on metabolism.

Seino, S., Bell, G. I., and Li, WH, 1992, Sequences of Primate Insulin Genes Support the Hypothesis of a slower Rate of Molecular Evolution in Humans and Apes than in Monkeys. Mol. Biol. Evol. 9(2):193-203. See above.

Fielding, S, Martill, D., and Naish, D., 2005, Solnhofen-Style Soft-Tissue Preservation in a New Species of Turtle from the Crato Formation (Early Cretaceous, Aptian) of North-East Brazil. Paleontology 48(6):1301-1310. I did a post on this a few days ago.

Bell, G. L., and Polcyn, M. J., 2005, Dallasaurus turneri, A New Primitive Mosasauroid from the Middle Turonian of Texas and Comments on the Phylogeny of Mosasauridae (Squamata). Netherlands Journal of Geosciences 84(3):177-194. I did a post on this as well. Strangely enough, it is relevant to the above two articles on snakes. I'll mention how it is relevant if I actually get round to writing the post. I say strangely because a paper I mentioned here has bearing on the above articles on body size, metabolic rates and molecular evolution.