ABSTRACT
In this chapter we review a number of methods recently developed to estimate ancestral character states for continuous characters. Though parsimony and maximum likelihood methods appear very different, we highlight deep similarities between them. We show how an assumption of many of the methods (consistency of rate of change) can be tested, and show that it does not hold for an example data set of carnivore body masses. The methods are then compared in terms of the accuracy of their predictions; we use primate body mass and conodont Pa element size to assess how well the ancestral estimates from each method agree with fossil evidence. No method was found to give precise and accurate estimates, and adding complexity to models does not necessarily improve the ancestral estimates obtained.
