'knowledge on': correct, but uncommon, or different?

Hello everyone,

I know similar questions have been asked here before, but none of the answers I've seen so far seem to be relevant and completely satisfactory.

I've come across the following sentence:

To evaluate the historical development of jaws, knowledge on the ancestral form of those mouth appendages, as well as on phylogenetic subdivisions of [species group], is essential.

As you can see, the author, who isn't a native speaker of English, decided to use 'on'. While most dictionaries and grammar books say 'of' or 'about' are the only prepositions allowed (see, for instance, this Macmillan Dictionary Online http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/knowledge), I've seen a few articles written by native speakers of English in which 'knowledge' was followed by 'on' instead.

It's not entirely clear to me what difference there might be, if any at all.

A few ideas:

Could it be analogous to the difference between 'an article about' as opposed to 'an article on', with the latter option implying some sort of expert or academic text rather than an ordinary, laymen-oriented piece of wirting?

Or, perhaps, 'on' might indicate 'detailed information', while 'of' could convey both 'general awareness' and 'detailed information', and hence be a bit more ambiguous. This would, nevertheless, contradict what most dictionaries say.

And maybe, 'on' is completely synonymous, but less frequent than 'of' or 'about', and it conveys no special or additional meaning whatsoever. Its use in the above sentence might be to avoid confusion: 'phylogenetic subdicisions' is linked to 'knowledge', not to 'form'.

See also the following https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=knowledge+on+the+subject%2Cknowledge+of+the+subject%2Cknowledge+on+this%2Cknowledge+of+this%2Cknowledge+on+the+matter%2Cknowledge+of+the+matter&year_start=1860&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=5&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cknowledge%20on%20the%20subject%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cknowledge%20of%20the%20subject%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cknowledge%20on%20this%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cknowledge%20of%20this%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cknowledge%20on%20the%20matter%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cknowledge%20of%20the%20matter%3B%2Cc0.

Hence, my question in short: Is it necessary to correct the above sentence?

Thanks for any comments or ideas!

P.