Fig. 4: Fossil morphospace and disparity through time.

a, Empirical phylomorphospace of the plant kingdom including the same sample of extant taxa plus 160 fossil taxa, and their inferred ancestors. The axes summarize morphological disparity derived from the observed dissimilarity between taxa (calculated using Gower’s index) subjected to NMDS. A convex hull was fitted around each major lineage. Fossil taxa are shown as black dots. The tree represents a summary of the current hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships, and the character states at each node were estimated through stochastic character mapping across a sample of trees. b, Cumulative phenotypic disparity (sum of variances) through time, estimated using a time-calibrated phylogeny including fossil taxa whose phylogenetic position could be reliably estimated. The solid line represents the median from 1,000 bootstrap replicates, with the shaded regions representing the 2.5% and 97.5%, and 25% and 75% percentiles. Species divergence dates were obtained from Morris et al.⁵⁶. Disparity through time was estimated using dispRity⁵⁴ in R, under a model of gradual evolution with time bins every 50 million years. Orange bands represent geological periods.