Discoveries are a driving force for progress in palaeontology. Palaeontology as a discipline of scientific inquiry has gained many fresh insights into the history of life, from the discoveries of many new fossils in China in the last 20 years, and from the new ideas derived from these fossils. This special issue of Proceedings of Royal Society B entitled Recent Advances in Chinese Palaeontology...

the kashkan formation (paleocene to middle eocene), consists of conglomerate, sandstone, and siltstone in the zagros folded zone, southwest iran. type of the sedimentary facies, architectural elements and trace fossils show that kashkan deposits were formed in a low sinuosity braided stream system, with north to south flow direction. the formation displays coarsening-upward succession reflects ...

Abstract Since the 1980s, Upper Jurassic lithographic limestone of Causse Méjean (southern France) has been known by local naturalists to yield fossils. However, until beginning 21st century, this plattenkalk remained largely undersampled and scientifically underestimated. Here, we present results two decades prospection sampling in Drigas Nivoliers quarries. We provide first palaeontological i...

The up to 304 m thick, turbiditic, siliciclastic Ashin Formation (Upper Ladinian to Lower Carnian?) crops out widely in the Nakhlak area of central Iran. The rocks consist mainly of turbiditic volcaniclastic sandstones and shales that were deposited in distal parts of submarine fans of the continental slope to abyssal plain. Trace fossils occur commonly in the lower parts of the turbiditic volc...

The Ediacaran Doushantuo biota has yielded fossils interpreted as eukaryotic organisms, either animal embryos or eukaryotes basal or distantly related to Metazoa. However, the fossils have been interpreted alternatively as giant sulphur bacteria similar to the extant Thiomargarita. To test this hypothesis, living and decayed Thiomargarita were compared with Doushantuo fossils and experimental t...

The increase in trace fossil diversity across the Neoproterozoic-Cambrian boundary often is presented in terms of tabulations of ichnogenera. However, a clearer picture of the increase in diversity and complexity can be reached by combining trace fossils into broad groups defined both on morphology and interpretation. This also focuses attention on looking for similarites between Neoproterozoic...

The fossilized birth-death (FBD) model can make use of information contained in multiple fossils representing the same clade, and we here apply this model to infer divergence times in beeches (genus Fagus), using 53 fossils and nuclear sequences for all nine species. We also apply FBD dating to the fern clade Osmundaceae, with about 12 living species and 36 fossils. Fagus nuclear sequences cann...