Fossil record
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Recent papers in Fossil record
Since Darwin, biologists have been struck by the extraordinary diversity of teleost fishes, particularly in contrast to their closest " living fossil " holostean relatives. Hypothesized drivers of teleost success include innovations in... more
Three specimens of a fossil catfish, collected from the Upper Miocene of Toros-Menalla (Western Djurab, Chad), are identified as members of Auchenoglanis (Claroteidae, Auchenoglanidinae) based on the shape and the ornamentation of the... more
The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary~ 65.5 million years ago marks one of the three largest mass extinctions in the past 500 million years. The extinction event coincided with a large asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Mexico, and occurred within... more
We believe that punctuational change dominates the history of life: evolution is concentrated in very rapid events of speciation (geologically instantaneous, even if tolerably continuous in ecological time). Most species, during their... more
“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light evolution…” says Theodosius Dobzhansky, distinguished geneticist in Scientific American (Ewald, 1993). “Evolutionary biology is, of course, the scientific foundation for all biology, and... more
The Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition is a key period of change in the prehistory of the Old World and one of the most studied issues in paleoanthropology, as the nature of the transition(s) is still, after at least a century of... more
A Review of Stephen C. Meyer's book, "Darwin's Doubt", published in 2014.
The origin of the genus Homo in Africa signals the beginning of the shift from increasingly bipedal apes to primitive, large-brained, stone tool-making, meat-eaters that traveled far and wide. This early part of the human genus is... more
The study of microbial fossils involves a broad array of disciplines and covers a vast diversity of topics, of which we review a select few, summarizing the state of the art. Microbes are found as body fossils preserved in different modes... more
The origin of extant amphibians (Lissamphibia: frogs, salamanders and caecilians) is one of the most controversial questions in vertebrate evolution, owing to large morphological and temporal gaps in the fossil record. Current discussions... more
Abrupt collapse of the tropical rainforest biome (Coal Forests) drove rapid diversification of Carboniferous tetrapods (amphibians and reptiles) in Euramerica. This finding is based on analysis of global and alpha diversity databases in a... more