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Late Miocene transformation of Mediterranean Sea biodiversity bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Konstantina Agiadi, Niklas Hohmann, Elsa Gliozzi, Danae Thivaiou, Francesca Bosellini, Marco Taviani, Giovanni Bianucci, Alberto Collareta, Laurent Londeix, Costanza Faranda, Francesca Bulian, Efterpi Koskeridou, Francesca Lozar, Alan Maria Mancini, Stefano Dominici, Pierre Moissette, Ildefonso Bajo Campos, Enrico Borghi, George Iliopoulos, Assimina Antonarakou, George Kontakiotis, Evangelia Besiou
Understanding deep-time marine biodiversity change under the combined effects of climate and connectivity changes is fundamental for predicting the impacts of modern climate change in semi-enclosed seas. We quantify the Late Miocene-Early Pliocene (11.63-3.6 Ma) taxonomic diversity of the Mediterranean Sea for calcareous nannoplankton, dinocysts, foraminifera, ostracods, corals, molluscs, bryozoans
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Spatially heterogeneous responses of planktonic foraminifera assemblages over 700,000 years of climate change bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Gregor Hans Mathes, Carl Reddin, Wolfgang Kiessling, Gawain S. Antell, Erin E. Saupe, Manuel J. Steinbauer
Aim: To determine the degree to which assemblages of planktonic foraminifera track thermal conditions. Location: The worlds oceans. Time period: The last 700,000 years of glacial-interglacial cycles. Major taxa studied: Planktonic foraminifera. Methods: We investigate assemblage dynamics in planktonic foraminifera in response to temperature changes using a global dataset of Quaternary planktonic foraminifera
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Adaptive landscapes unveil the complex evolutionary path to mammalian forelimb function and posture bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Robert J Brocklehurst, Magdalen Mercado, Kenneth D Angielczyk, Stephanie E Pierce
The 'sprawling-parasagittal' postural transition is a key part of mammalian evolution, associated with sweeping reorganization of the postcranial skeleton in mammals compared to their forebears, the non-mammalian synapsids. However, disputes over forelimb function in fossil synapsids render the precise nature of the 'sprawling-parasagittal' transition controversial. We shed new light on the origins
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An Early Miocene skeleton of Brachydiceratherium Lavocat, 1951 (Mammalia, Perissodactyla) from the Baikal area, Russia, and a revised phylogeny of Eurasian teleoceratines bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Alexander Sizov, Alexey Klementiev, Pierre-Olivier Antoine
Hippo-like rhinocerotids, or teleoceratines, were a conspicuous component of Holarctic Miocene mammalian faunas, but their phylogenetic relationships remain poorly known. Excavations in lower Miocene deposits of the Olkhon Island (Tagay locality, Eastern Siberia; 16-18 Ma) have opened a unique window on the poorly-known early history of the Lake Baikal ecosystems, notably by unearthing a skeleton of
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Marine Origin of the Arachnid Brain Reveals Early Divergence of Chelicerata bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-03-02 Nicholas James Strausfeld, Frank Hirth
Cambrian preservation of fossilized tissues provides crucial information about divergent cerebral arrangements amongst stem arthropods. One such genus is Mollisonia, whose clustered appendages beneath a frontal carapace suggest an early chelicerate. Here we apply neuroanatomical, genetic, and developmental analysis to curated fossil data of Mollisonia to demonstrate that instead of a linear organization
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Hominin brain size increase has emerged from within-species encephalization bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-03-02 Thomas A Puschel, Samuel L Nicholson, Joanna Baker, Robert A Barton, Chris Venditti
The fact that rapid brain size increase was clearly a key aspect of human evolution has prompted many studies focussing on this phenomenon, and many suggestions as to the underlying evolutionary patterns and processes. No study to date has however separated out the contributions of change through time within- vs. between- hominin species whilst simultaneously incorporating effects of body size. Using
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Diplopoda in the world fossil record bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Michelle Álvarez Rodríguez, Francisco Riquelme, Miguel A. Hernández Patricio, Fabio Cupul-Magaña
We present a comprehensive catalog with an updated database of the fossil record of Diplopoda in the world. Taxonomic data was collected from descriptions and reports published from 1854 to the present. We also include new records from the Lower Miocene Mexican amber, counting 83 unknown fossil inclusions, with the first records of the orders Polyxenida, Platydesmida, and Julida, as well as the families
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The contribution of Mediterranean connectivity to morphological variability in Iron Age sheep of the Eastern Mediterranean bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-02-28 Sierra A Harding, Angelos Hadjikoumis, Shyama Vermeersch, Nimrod Marom
The movement of livestock across the Mediterranean is well-documented in the Neolithic era, but its significance during subsequent periods has received less attention. This study explores potential evidence for maritime connections between sheep populations in the Iron Age eastern Mediterranean by analyzing astragal bones from four coastal and inland sites in Israel and Cyprus. Employing an established
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GIRAFFOIDS FROM THE SIWALIKS OF PAKISTAN bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-02-28 Nikos Solounias, Maria Iba
Although today they occur in Africa, during the Miocene Giraffoids were widespread in Eurasia. We describe the giraffoid faunas found in the Siwaliks of Pakistan. These faunas are extremely rich and provide with several new giraffoid taxa that are morphologically different to what taxa known before and give new insights in the taxa. Non-Siwalik localities that contribute key information are: Fort Ternan
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The effects of clay minerals on bacterial community composition during arthropod decay bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Nora Corthesy, Farid Saleh, Camille Thomas, Jonathan B. Antcliffe, Allison C. Daley
Fossilization, or the transition of an organism from the biosphere to the geosphere, is a complex mechanism involving numerous biological and geological variables. Bacteria are one of the most significant biotic players to decompose organic matter in natural environments, early on during fossilization. However, bacterial processes are difficult to characterize as many different abiotic conditions can
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Body reconstruction and size estimation of plesiosaurs bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Ruizhe Jackevan Zhao
Body size is the key to understanding many biological properties. Sizes of extinct animals are usually estimated from body reconstructions since their masses can not be weighed directly. Plesiosaurs were Mesozoic marine reptiles that were diverse in both body plan and size. Attempts to estimate body masses of plesiosaurs were rare in the past two centuries, possibly due to lack of knowledge about their
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Tetrapod terrestrialisation: a weight-bearing potential already present in the humerus of the stem-tetrapod fish Eusthenopteron foordi bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Francois Clarac, Alexis Cornille, Sifra Bijl, Sophie Sanchez
Our study shows that the von Mises stress, induced by external load on the humerus of Eusthenopteron, dissipates through the cortex, trabeculae and the muscles of the pectoral appendage involved in elevation and protraction. As Eusthenopteron's microanatomy is similar to that of Devonian tetrapods, we expect them to share the same process of load dissipation and energy absorption through 1) cortical
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Optical photothermal infrared spectroscopy (O-PTIR): a promising new tool for bench-top analytical palaeontology at the sub-micron scale bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Corentin C. Loron, Ferenc Borondics
The identification of preserved organic material within fossils is challenging. Well-established vibrational spectroscopy techniques, such as micro-FTIR (Fourier Transform Infra-Red spectroscopy), have been widely used to investigate organic fossils molecular composition. However, even when well-adapted to study objects several tens of micrometre across, they still suffer from limitations, notably
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A framework for reconstructing ancient food webs using functional trait data bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Jack O. Shaw, Alexander M. Dunhill, Andrew P. Beckerman, Jennifer A. Dunne, Pincelli M. Hull
Food webs provide quantitative insights into the structure and dynamics of ecological communities. Previous work has shown their utility in understanding community responses to modern and ancient perturbations, including anthropogenic change and mass extinctions. However, few ancient food webs have been reconstructed due to difficulties assessing trophic interactions amongst extinct species derived
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Hydrodynamic function of genal prolongations in trinucleimorph trilobites revealed by computational fluid dynamics bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Stephen Pates, Harriet B. Drage
Trilobites, a diverse clade of Palaeozoic arthropods, repeatedly converged on the trinucleimorph morphology. Trinucleimorphs possessed vaulted cephala with a broad anterior fringe and prominent posteriorly orientated genal prolongations. Various functional hypotheses have been proposed for the fringe, however the possible function of the genal prolongations has received less attention. Here we use
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Assessing the Adequacy of Morphological Models used in Palaeobiology bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-01-27 Laura P. A. Mulvey, Michael R. May, Jeremy M. Brown, Sebastian Hoehna, April M. Wright, Rachel C. M. Warnock
Reconstructing the evolutionary history of different groups of organisms provides insight into how life originated and diversified on Earth. Phylogenetic trees are commonly used to estimate this evolutionary history, providing a hypothesis of the events. Within Bayesian phylogenetics a major step in estimating a tree is in choosing an appropriate model of character evolution. In the case of most extinct
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Distinct causes underlie double-peaked trilobite morphological disparity bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-01-26 Harriet B. Drage, Stephen Pates
Trilobite cephalic morphology impacted the autecology of individuals, and is critical for high- and low-level taxonomic assignments. Disparity in trilobite cephalon shape varied through time and was integral to the occupation of a diversity of ecological niches. To fully appreciate trilobite cephalic evolution, we must understand how this disparity varies, and what factors control cephalon morphometry
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Evolution of hind limb morphology of Titanosauriformes (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) analyzed via 3D Geometric Morphometrics reveals wide-gauge posture as an exaptation for gigantism bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Adrian Paramo Blazquez, Pedro Mocho, Fernando Escaso, Francisco Ortega
The sauropod hind limb was the main support that allowed their gigantic body masses and a wide range of dynamic stability adaptations. It was closely related to the position of the centre of masses of their multi-ton barrel-shaped bodies, and experienced one of the most noticeable posture changes during macronarian evolution. Deeply branched macronarians achieved increasingly arched hind limbs in what
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Early evolution of the ecdysozoan body plan bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-01-18 Deng Wang, Yaqin Qiang, Junfeng Guo, Jean Vannier, Zucheng Song, Jiaxin Peng, Boyao Zhang, Jie Sun, Yilun Yu, Yiheng Zhang, Tao Zhang, Xiaoguang Yang, Jian Han
Extant ecdysozoans (moulting animals) are represented by a great variety of vermiform or articulated organisms. However, controversies remain about the nature of their ancestral body plan although the vermiform hypothesis seems to prevail. We describe here Beretella spinosa gen et sp. nov. a tiny ecdysozoan from the early Cambrian, Yanjiahe Formation, South China, with an unusual sack-like appearance
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Longer mandible or nose? Co-evolution of feeding organs in early elephantiforms bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2024-01-07 Chunxiao Li, Tao Deng, Yang Wang, Fajun Sun, Burt Wolff, Qigao Jiangzuo, Jiao Ma, Luda Xing, Jiao Fu, Ji Zhang, Shi-Qi Wang
The long-trunked elephantids underwent a significant evolutionary stage characterized by an exceptionally elongated mandible. The initial elongation and subsequent regression of the long mandible, along with its co-evolution with the trunk, present an intriguing issue that remains incompletely understood. Through comparative functional and eco-morphological investigations, as well as feeding preference
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Early Jurassic origin of avian endothermy and thermophysiological diversity in Dinosauria bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-12-23 Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, Juan L. Cantalapiedra, Lewis A. Jones, Sara Gamboa, Sofía Galván, Alexander J. Farnsworth, Paul J. Valdes, Graciela Sotelo, Sara Varela
A fundamental question in dinosaur evolution is how they adapted to substantial long-term shifts in Earth System during the Mesozoic and when they developed environmentally independent, avian-style acclimatization due to the evolution of an endothermic physiology. Combining fossil occurrences with macroevolutionary and paleoclimatic models, we unveil distinct evolutionary pathways in the main dinosaur
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Not dasycladalean alga, but an Odyssey of the earliest Phanerozoic animal reef-builders bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-12-08 Aihua Yang, Cui Luo, Jian Han, Andrey Yu. Zhuravlev, Joachim Reitner, Haijing Sun, Han Zeng, Fangchen Zhao, Shixue Hu
The compacted macrofossil Protomelission? sp. from the early Cambrian Xiaoshiba Lagerstaette was recently ascribed to early dasycladalean green algae and used to disprove the bryozoan affinity of coeval phosphatized microfossils, which made the puzzling question whether the bryozoans originated in early Cambrian pending again. Our new analyses of multiple specimens which are conspecific with Protomelission
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Exploring the preservation of a parasitic trace in decapod crustaceans using finite elements analysis bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-12-08 Nathan Lloyd Wright, Adiël A Klompmaker, Elizabeth Petsios
The fossil record of parasitism is poorly understood, due largely to the scarcity of strong fossil evidence of parasites. Understanding the preservation potential for fossil parasitic evidence is critical to contextualizing the fossil record of parasitism. Here, we present the first use of X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanning and finite elements analysis (FEA) to analyze the impact of a parasite-induced
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Nanoscale Imaging and Microanalysis of Ice Age Bone Offers New Perspective on 'Subfossils' and Fossilization bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-12-07 Landon A Anderson
The 3-D structure and organization of type-1 collagen protein and vasculature for a set of ancient permafrost bones is extensively documented at the nanoscale (up to 150,000x magnification) for the first time. The chemical mapping technique ToF-SIMS is additionally used to directly localize chemical signal to these structures; C:N and isotope measurements are also reported for the bulk organic bone
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A Glimpse Into the Cenomanian: Palynology of the Arlington Archosaur Site, Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, Texas, USA bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Maria Antonieta Lorente, Christopher Noto, Peter Flaig
The Arlington Archosaur Site (AAS) between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, is known as a rich fossiliferous section. The age of these rocks is generally considered to be mid Cenomanian, but conflicting evidence suggests the age may be as young as the late Cenomanian early Turonian. To address the issue, a palynological study was designed and conducted based on the close sampling of the lithofacies. Palynological
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Dietary reconstructions of Magdalenian canids from SW-Germany do not indicate that the area was a centre of early European wolf domestication bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-11-28 Paul D Bons, Catherine C Bauer, Lydia J Papkalla
In their paper 'A refined proposal for the origin of dogs: the case study of Gnirshoehle, a Magdalenian cave site', Baumann and colleagues claim that their data 'support the hypothesis that the Hegau Jura was a potential center of early European wolf domestication', and that 'such a scenario becomes plausible considering a close proximity of canids and humans thereby introducing a controlled, or at
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Oxygen isotopes in orangutan teeth reveal recent and ancient climate variation bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-11-21 Tanya M Smith, Manish Arora, Christine Austin, Janaina Nunes Avila, Mathieu Duval, Tze Tshen Lim, Philip Piper, Petra Vaiglova, John de Vos, Ian S Williams, Jian-xin Zhao, Daniel R Green
Studies of climate variation commonly rely on chemical and isotopic changes recorded in sequentially-produced growth layers, such as in corals, shells and tree rings, as well as in accretionary deposits--ice and sediment cores, and speleothems. Oxygen isotopic compositions (d18O) of tooth enamel are a direct method of reconstructing environmental variation experienced by an individual animal. Here
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Prebiotic membrane structures mimic the morphology of purported early traces of life on Earth bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-11-05 Sean F Jordan, Mark A van Zuilen, Joti Rouillard, Zita Martins, Nick Lane
Elucidating the most probable compositions of the first cell membranes prior to the origin of life, within a laboratory setting, requires experiments with organic molecules and chemical conditions representative of those present on the early Earth. As such, the membrane forming molecules used in these experiments are described as "prebiotically plausible", i.e., they could have formed through abiotic
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Life in a Central European warm-temperate to subtropical open forest: paleoecology of the rhinocerotids from Ulm-Westtangente (Aquitanian, early Miocene, Germany) bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-11-02 Manon Hullot, Celine Martin, Cecile Blondel, Gertrud Roessner
The locality of Ulm-Westtangente yielded the richest vertebrate fauna from the Aquitanian of Germany. Its dating to the Mammal Neogene Zone 2a, a turnover in Cenozoic climate, makes it a crucial source for the understanding of faunal, palaeoecological and palaeoenvironmental specifics of the European Aquitanian. However, if most taxa from Ulm-Westtangente have been studied, very little to nothing has
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Trophic diversity and evolution in Enantiornithes: a synthesis including new insights from Bohaiornithidae bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-26 Case Vincent Miller, Jen A. Bright, Xiaoli Wang, Xiaoting Zheng, Michael Pittman
The "opposite birds" Enantiornithines were the dominant birds of the Mesozoic, but our understanding of their ecology is still tenuous. In particular, diets of enantiornithine species have remained speculative until recently. While this new work has been effective at determining diet within groups of enantiornithines, diet data thus far has been too sparse to comment on larger trends in the diversity
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Introducing Isotòpia: a stable isotope database for Classical Antiquity bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-22 Giulia Formichella, Silvia Soncin, Carmine Lubritto, Mary Anne Tafuri, Ricardo Fernandes, Carlo Cocozza
We present Isotòpia, an open-access database compiling over 36,000 stable isotope measurements (δ13C, δ15N, δ18O, δ34S, 87Sr/86Sr, 206Pb/204Pb, 207Pb/204Pb, 208Pb/204Pb, 207Pb/206Pb, and 208Pb/206Pb) on human, animal, and plant bioarchaeological remains dating to Classical Antiquity (approximately 800 BCE - 500 CE). These were recovered from different European regions, particularly from the Mediterranean
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Low-invasive sampling method for taxonomic for the identification of archaeological and paleontological bones by proteomics of their collagens bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-20 Isabelle Fabrizi, Stephanie Flament, Christian Rolando, Claire Delhon, Lionel Gourichon, Manon Vuillien, Tarek Oueslati, Patrick Auguste, Fabrice Bray
Collagen from paleontological bones is an important organic material for isotopic measurement, radiocarbon and paleoproteomic analyzes, to provide information on diet, dating and taxonomy. Current paleoproteomics methods are destructive and require from a few milligrams to several tenths of milligrams of bone for analysis. In many cultures, bones are raw materials for artefact which are conserved in
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Estimating body volumes and surface areas of animals from cross-sections bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Ruizhe Jackevan Zhao
Body mass and surface area are among the most important biological properties, but such information are lacking for some extant organisms and all extinct species. Numerous methods have been developed for body size estimation for this reason. There are two main categories of mass-estimating methods: volumetric-density approaches and extant-scaling approaches. In this paper, a new 2D volumetric-density
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Alasemenia, the earliest ovule with three wings and without cupule bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-14 Deming Wang, Jiangnan Yang, Le Liu, Yi Zhou, Peng Xu, Min Qin, Pu Huang
The ovules or seeds (fertilized ovules) with wings are widespread and especially important for wind dispersal. However, the earliest ovules in the Famennian of the Late Devonian are rarely known about the dispersal syndrome and usually surrounded by a cupule. From Xinhang, Anhui, China, we report a new taxon of Famennian ovules, Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov. Each ovule possesses three integumentary
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Three-dimensional anatomy of the early Eocene Whitephippus (Teleostei: Lampriformes) documents parallel conquests of the pelagic environment by multiple teleost lineages bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-06 Donald Davesne, James V. Andrews, Hermione T. Beckett, Sam Giles, Matt Friedman
The early Eocene fossil assemblage of the London Clay (Southeastern England) is a key window to the early Palaeogene diversification of teleost fishes in the open ocean. Despite their three-dimensional preservation that offers unique insight into skeletal anatomy, the London Clay fossils are still poorly described for the most part. Whitephippus tamensis is a fossil teleost from this assemblage, known
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Macroevolutionary drivers of morphological disparity in the avian quadrate bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-06 Pei-Chen Kuo, Guillermo Navalon, Roger Benson, Daniel J. Field
In birds, the quadrate bone acts as a hinge between the lower jaw and the skull, playing an important role in cranial kinesis. As such, the evolution of avian quadrate morphology may plausibly be assumed to have been influenced by selective pressures related to feeding ecology. However, variation in quadrate morphology across living birds and its potential relationship with ecology have never been
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Multiple origins of cephalic sutures in trilobites and their relatives bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-06 Kun-sheng Du, Jin Guo, Sarah Losso, Stephen Pates, Ming Li, Ai-lin Chen
Euarthropods are an extremely diverse phylum in the modern, and have been since their origination in the early Palaeozoic. They grow through moulting the exoskeleton (ecdysis) facilitated by breaking along lines of weakness (sutures). Artiopodans, a group that includes trilobites and their non-biomineralizing relatives, dominated arthropod diversity in benthic communities during the Palaeozoic. Most
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The three-dimensionally articulated oral apparatus of a Devonian heterostracan sheds light on feeding in Palaeozoic jawless fishes bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Richard Peter Dearden, Andrew Jones, Sam Giles, Agnese Lanzetti, Madleen Grohganz, Zerina Johanson, Stephan Lautenschlager, Emma Randle, Philip Donoghue, Ivan J Sansom
Attempts to explain the origin and diversification of vertebrates have commonly invoked the evolution of feeding ecology, contrasting the passive suspension feeding of invertebrate chordate and larval lampreys with active predation in living jawed vertebrates. Of the extinct jawless vertebrates that phylogenetically intercalate these living groups, the feeding apparatus is preserved only in the early
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Convergent evolution of ventral adaptations for enrollment in trilobites and extant euarthropods bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-10-01 Sarah R. Losso, Pauline Affatato, Karma Nanglu, Javier Ortega-Hernandez
The ability to enroll for protection is an effective defensive strategy that has convergently evolved multiple times in disparate animal groups ranging from euarthropods to mammals. Enrollment is an evolutionary staple of trilobites, and their biomineralized dorsal exoskeleton offers a versatile substrate for the evolution of interlocking devices. However, it is unknown whether trilobites also featured
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Femora Nutrient Foramina and Aerobic Capacity in Giant Extinct Xenarthrans bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Luciano Varela, P. Sebastián Tambusso, Richard A. Fariña
Nutrient foramina are small openings in the periosteal surface of long bones that traverse the cortical layer and reach the medullary cavity. They are important for the delivery of nutrients and oxygen to bone tissue, and are crucial for the repair and remodeling of bones over time. The nutrient foramina in the femur's diaphysis are related to the energetic needs of the femur, and have been shown to
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A continuous centennial Lateglacial-Early Holocene (15-10 cal kyr BP) palynological record from the Iberian Pyrenees and regional comparisons bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Valenti Rull, Arnau Blasco, Miguel Angel Calero, Maarten Blaauw, Teresa Vegas-Vilarrubia
This paper presents the first continuous (gap-free) Lateglacial-Early Holocene (LGEH) pollen record for the Iberian Pyrenees resolved at centennial resolution. The main aims are (i) to provide a standard chronostratigraphic correlation framework, (ii) to unravel the relationships between vegetation shifts, climatic changes and fire, and (iii) to obtain a regional picture of LGEH vegetation for the
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Approaches to Species Distribution Modelling in Dinosaurs and Other Fossil Organisms bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Maximilian T Stockdale
SDM describes a family of methods aiming to predict the geographic distribution of organisms using environmental data such as climate variables. It is a versatile tool in estimating ecological communities and interactions both spatially and through time. However, it has had limited utility in predicting the geographic distribution of fossil organisms. Due to preservation and sampling biases, fossil
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Zooarchaeological investigation of the Hoabinhian exploitation of reptiles and amphibians in Thailand and Cambodia with a focus on the Yellow-headed tortoise (Indotestudo elongata (Blyth, 1854)) bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-09-01 Corentin Bochaton, Sirikanya Chantasri, Melada Maneechote, Julien Claude, Christophe Griggo, Wilailuck Naksri, Hubert Forestier, Heng Sophady, Prasit Auertrakulvit, Jutinach Bowonsachoti, Valery Zeitoun
While non-marine turtles are almost ubiquitous in the archaeological record of Southeast Asia, their zooarchaeological examination has been inadequately pursued within this tropical region. This gap in research hinders a complete comprehension of past human subsistence strategies and economies, as only a limited number of comprehensive studies encompassing all the taxa found in archaeological sites
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Forensic Facial Approximation of Achondroplastic Dwarf from Medieval Cemetery in Central Europe bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-08-28 Cicero Moraes, Marta Krenz-Niedbała, Sylwia Łukasik, Camilo Serrano Prada
Achondroplasia (ACH, achondroplastic dwarfism) represents the most common form of skeletal dysplasia, occurring in c. 4 out of every 100,000 births. This study presents a computer-based facial approximation of the skull of a male individual suffering from ACH, who died at 30-45 years of age and was buried in Lekno, Poland between the 9th and 11th centuries AD. For the approximation procedure, soft
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Age-dependent extinction and the neutral theory of biodiversity bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-08-24 James Gabriel Saulsbury, C. Tomomi Parins-Fukuchi, Connor J. Wilson, Trond Reitan, Lee Hsiang Liow
Red Queen (RQ) theory states that adaptation does not protect species from extinction because their competitors are continually adapting alongside them. RQ was founded on the apparent independence of extinction risk and fossil taxon age, but analytical developments have since demonstrated that age-dependent extinction is widespread, usually most intense among young species. Here we develop ecological
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The pharynx of the iconic stem-group chondrichthyan Acanthodes (Agassiz, 1833) revisited with micro computed tomography. bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Richard P Dearden, Anthony Herrel, Alan Pradel
Acanthodes has long been the primary source of information on the pharyngeal skeleton of "acanthodians", a stem-group chondrichthyan grade. Because of this its anatomy has played an outsized role in attempts to understand the evolution of the jawed vertebrate pharynx and the clade as a whole. However, the anatomy of the pharynx of Acanthodes remains poorly understood and subject to several competing
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CuticleTrace: A toolkit for capturing cell outlines of leaf cuticle with implications for paleoecology and paleoclimatology bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Benjamin A Lloyd, Richard S Barclay, Regan E Dunn, Ellen D Currano, Ayuni I Mohamaad, Kymbre Skersies, Surangi W Punyasena
Premise: Leaf epidermal cell morphology is closely tied to plants' evolutionary histories and growth environments, and is therefore of interest to many plant biologists. However, cell measurement can be time-consuming and restrictive with current methods. CuticleTrace is a suite of FIJI and R-based functions that streamlines and automates the segmentation and measurement of epidermal pavement cells
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Fossil calibrations for molecular analyses and divergence time estimation for true crabs (Decapoda: Brachyura) bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-08-20 Javier Luque, Heather D. Bracken-Grissom, Javier Ortega-Hernandez, Joanna M. Wolfe
True crabs, or Brachyura, comprise over 7,600 known species and are among the most ecologically dominant, economically significant, and popularly recognized group of extant crustaceans. There are over 3,000 fossil brachyuran species known from mid and upper Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Cenozoic deposits across the globe, many of them preserved in exquisite detail, but the origins and early evolution of
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Sorting of persistent morphological polymorphisms links paleobiological pattern to population process bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-08-10 C. Tomomi Parins-Fukuchi
Biological variation fuels evolutionary change. Across longer timescales, however, polymorphisms at both the genomic and phenotypic levels often persists longer than would be expected under standard population genetic models such as positive selection or genetic drift. Explaining the maintenance of this variation within populations across long timespans via balancing selection has been a major triumph
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AI in Paleontology bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-08-08 Congyu Yu, Fangbo Qin, Akinobu Watanabe, Weiqi Yao, Ying Li, Zichuan Qin, Yuming Liu, Haibing Wang, Qigao Jiangzuo, Allison Yi Hsiang, Chao Ma, Emily Rayfield, Michael J Benton, Xing Xu
Accumulating data have led to the emergence of data-driven paleontological studies, which reveal an unprecedented picture of evolutionary history. However, the fast-growing quantity and complication of data modalities make data processing laborious and inconsistent, while also lacking clear benchmarks to evaluate data collection and generation, and the performances of different methods on similar tasks
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Lack of early animal fossils: insights from taphonomic experiments on placozoans and their traces bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Elena Naimark, Yulia V Lyupina, Mikhail A. Nikitin, Alexander D Finoshin
Placozoa are simple two-layered multicellular animals. Can such a simple animal preserve in the fossil record? The results of our taphonomic experiments showed that it is chemically possible; however, the chances of the presevation are negligible for two reasons. Firstly, the resistance of living Trichoplax to lethal factors turned out to be quite high. Secondly, post-mortem changes in the body of
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Ophidian physique: the capacity of middle trunk vertebral shape for quantitative taxonomic delimitation in snakes bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-08-03 John J Jacisin, Anna Michelle Lawing
Skeletal specializations in snakes have resulted in incredible locomotive adaptability, including oft-overlooked vertebral complexity. Snake vertebrae are usually identified via qualitative descriptions of morphological traits; however, identifying and describing snake vertebrae in a scientifically replicable way has long hindered fossil snake research, where attempts to identify between or within
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Identification of Late Pleistocene and Holocene fossil lizards from Hall's Cave and a primer on morphological variation in North American lizard skulls bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-07-26 David Trevino Ledesma, Simon G Scarpetta, John J Jacisin, Antonio Meza, Melissa E Kemp
Fossil identification practices have a profound effect on our interpretation of the past because these identifications form the basis for downstream analyses. Therefore, well-supported fossil identifications are paramount for examining the impact of past environmental changes on populations and communities. Here we apply an apomorphic identification framework in a case study identifying fossil lizard
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The impact of late Pleistocene mammal extinctions on pathogen richness in extant hosts. bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Tomos O Prys-Jones, Andrew J Abraham, Joseph R Mihaljevic, Kris A Murray, Christopher E Doughty
Many species of large mammals were driven to extinction during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene (approx. 10,000 - 50,000 years ago), with cascading effects on the physical structure of ecosystems and the dispersal of seeds, nutrients, and microbes. However, it remains uncertain whether the parasites associated with these extinct hosts also disappeared or persisted in surviving (extant) mammals
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Deep learning approaches to the phylogenetic placement of extinct pollen morphotypes bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-07-13 Marc-Élie Adaïmé, Shu Kong, Surangi W. Punyasena
The phylogenetic interpretation of pollen morphology is limited by our inability to recognize the evolutionary history embedded in pollen features. Deep learning offers tools for connecting morphology to phylogeny. Using neural networks, we developed an explicitly phylogenetic toolkit for analyzing the overall shape, internal structure, and texture of a pollen grain. Our analysis pipeline determines
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Insights from the Early Cretaceous: The promise of Lycoptera aDNA sequencing bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-06-21 Wanqian Zhao, Zhanyong Guo, Zengyuan Tian, Tongfu Su, Gangqiang Cao, Zixin Qi, Tiancang Qin, Wei Zhou, Jinyu Yang, Mingjie Chen, Xinge Zhang, Chunyan Zhou, Chuanjia Zhu, Mengfei Tang, Mengfei Tang, Di Wu, Meirong Song, Yuqi Guo, Liyou Qiu
We employed non-silica-based dipolar nanoparticle affinity bead technique to extract DNA from sedimentary rocks and successfully obtained aDNA from fossilized Lycoptera fishes from the Early Cretaceous in Beipiao, Liaoning Province, China. After library enrichment, high-throughput sequencing, nucleotide BLAST, and data filtering, 276 highly homologous ray-finned fish sequences were identified from
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Taphonomic damage obfuscates interpretation of the retroarticular region of the Asteriornis mandible bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-06-14 Abi Crane, Juan Benito, Albert Chen, Grace Musser, Christopher R. Torres, Julia A. Clarke, Stephan Lautenschlager, Daniel T. Ksepka, Daniel J. Field
Asteriornis maastrichtensis, from the latest Cretaceous of Belgium, is among the oldest known crown bird fossils, and its three-dimensionally preserved skull provides the most substantial insights into the cranial morphology of early crown birds to date. Phylogenetic analyses recovered Asteriornis as a total-group member of Galloanserae (the clade uniting Galliformes and Anseriformes. One important
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Evidence for deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledi bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-06-05 Lee R Berger, Tebogo Makhubela, Keneiloe Molopyane, Ashley Krüger, Patrick Randolph-Quinney, Marina Elliott, Becca Peixotto, Agustín Fuentes, Paul Tafforeau, Vincent Beyrand, Kathleen Dollman, Zubair Jinnah, Angharad Brewer Gillham, Kenneth Broad, Juliet Brophy, Gideon Chinamatira, Paul H. M. Dirks, Elen Feuerriegel, Alia Gurtov, Nompumelelo Hlophe, Lindsay Hunter, Rick Hunter, Kudakwashe Jakata, Corey
Recent excavations in the Rising Star Cave System of South Africa have revealed burials of the extinct hominin species Homo naledi. A combination of geological and anatomical evidence shows that hominins dug holes that disrupted the subsurface stratigraphy and interred the remains of H. naledi individuals, resulting in at least two discrete features within the Dinaledi Chamber and the Hill Antechamber
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Polyene-based colouration preserved in 12 million-year-old gastropod shells bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-05-20 Klaus Wolkenstein, Burkhard C. Schmidt, Mathias Harzhauser
Polyene pigments represent a major class of pigments in present-day organisms. Their occurrence in fossils has been frequently discussed, but to date no spectroscopic evidence was found. Here, we use in situ Raman microspectroscopy to examine the chemistry of exceptionally well-preserved gastropod shells with colour preservation from the Middle Miocene of the Vienna Basin (Austria, Hungary). Raman
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On the Quina side: A Neanderthal bone industry at Chez-Pinaud site, France bioRxiv. Paleontol. Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Malvina Baumann, Hugues Plisson, Serge Maury, Sylvain Renou, Hélène Coqueugnio, Nicolas Vanderesse, Ksenyia Kolobova, Svetlana Shnaider, Veerle Rots, Guillaume Guérin, William Rendu
Did Neanderthal produce a bone industry? The recent discovery of a large bone tool assemblage at the Neanderthal site of Chagyrskaya (Altai, Siberia, Russia) and the increasing discoveries of isolated finds of bone tools in various Mousterian sites across Eurasia stimulate the debate. Assuming that the isolate finds may be the tip of the iceberg and that the Siberian occurrence did not result from