Evolution of body mass in the Pan-Alcidae (Aves, Charadriiformes): the effects of combining neontological and paleontological data

Hypotheses regarding the evolution of many clades are often generated in the absence of data from the fossil record and potential biases introduced by exclusion of paleontological data are frequently ignored. With regard to body size evolution, extinct taxa are frequently excluded because of the lack of body mass estimates—making identification of reliable clade specific body mass estimators crucial to evaluating trends on paleontological...