Body size data for Neogene mammals in North America and Europe

The dataset contains species body mass (g) for Neogene large mammals, in the orders Artiodactyla and Perissodactyla. The body mass data were compiled from literature as well as measurements of museum specimen, covering ~50% of the 970 species in the two orders. In cases where more than one body mass measure is available for a species, we only include the mean body mass for the species in the dataset. In addition, the dataset provides the origination and extinction times estimated by the PyRate analyses for each species in North America and Europe respectively, using previously published fossil occurrences and accepting for sampling heterogeneity. We used this dataset to investigate the processes underlying mammalian body size evolution, and showed in our paper that the common trend of body size increase is generated by different processes in different clades and regions. Larger-bodied artiodactyl species on both continents tend to have higher origination rates, and both clades in North America show strong links between large bodies and low extinction rate. Collectively, our results suggest a strong role of species selection and perhaps of higher-taxon sorting in driving body size evolution, and highlight the value of investigating evolutionary processes in a biogeographic context.