Subject	Animal physiology
Specific subject area	Biology, muscle, anatomy, life sciences, meta-analysis, interspecific comparison, locomotion
Type of data	Tables Figures
How the data were acquired	A systematic literature search was conducted using academic search systems (Google Scholar, PubMed, and JSTOR) and library databases between June 1 2021 and November 30 2022 following a structure similar to PRISMA [2]. Reference lists of selected articles were also thoroughly investigated for additional studies. Data were extracted from the text, figures, tables, and supplementary materials of studies deemed eligible for the systematic review and meta-analysis (i.e. studies that provided skeletal muscle fiber composition data from mammalian species that were not subjected to experimental manipulations).
Data format	Secondary data Analyzed Filtered
Description of data collection	Taxonomic information, sex, age, number of individuals sampled, average body mass (kg), average slow fiber content (%) of each skeletal muscle under investigation and fiber-typing methodology were collated from eligible studies when available. If species body mass was not reported the mean was taken from published studies [3,4]. If muscle fiber content was reported from multiple sampling sites across a single muscle, the average across sampling sites was recorded.
Data source location	Eligible studies providing mammalian skeletal muscle fiber content are listed in Table 1.
Data accessibility	Repository name: Mendeley Data Data identification number: doi:10.17632/y47mj24ywy.3 Direct URL to data: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/y47mj24ywy/3
Related research article	S.R. Queeno, P.J. Reiser, C.M. Orr, T.D. Capellini, K.N. Sterner, M.C. O’Neill, Human and African ape myosin heavy chain content and the evolution of hominin skeletal muscle, Comp. Biochem. Physiol. A Mol. Integr. Physiol. 281 (2023) 111415.