What is driving the differential loss of skull bones throughout tetrapod evolution? Evidence from Temnospondyli

Abstract Skull simplification describes the convergent loss of bones in the tetrapod skull over evolutionary time. Much of this trend remains elusive, in particular, the apparent difference in evolutionary conservation across the skull. While some bones (e.g. nasal) have been retained for over 400 million years, others (e.g. tabular) were repeatedly lost. The drivers of this preferential loss remain unknown. We explore whether the discrepancy in evolutionary conservation in the lissamphibian lin