MODELING SPECIATION-FOSSILIZATION PROCESS IN TOTAL-EVIDENCE DATING AND ITS APPLICATION TO PENGUIN EVOLUTION (Invited Presentation)

I will present a model-based Bayesian method to estimate dated phylogenies. The method uses morphological data of extant and fossil (or only fossil) species, possibly molecular data (total-evidence), and preservation dates of fossils to estimate dated phylogenies in a joint inference. The recently introduced joint inference (`tip-dating') approach is a very promising method because it proposes a way to more objectively transfer the fossil evidence to absolute time constraints and avoids the sequensionality of other methods where a topology is estimated first and then dated in subsequent analyses. However, the joint inference can not overcome the limiting nature of the fossil records and the prior assumptions about the underling speciation-fossilization process have a large impact on the results and therefore should be accurately chosen. We used a fossilized-birth-death model in a joint inference to analyse a dataset of fossil and extant penguins and estimated that the crown penguins radiated only approximately 12.7 Ma, which is much earlier than previously estimated.