According to biomolecular data, the great apes split into Asian pongids (orang-utan) and African hominids (gorillas, chimpanzees and humans) 18–12 million years ago (Mya) and hominids split into gorillas and humans–chimpanzees 10–6 Mya. Fossils with pongid features appear in Eurasia after c. 15 Mya, and fossils with hominid fossils appear in Africa after c.10 Mya. Instead of the traditional sav...

According to biomolecular data, the great apes split into Asian pongids (orang-utan) and African hominids (gorillas, chimpanzees and humans) 18–12 million years ago (Mya) and hominids split into gorillas and humans–chimpanzees 10–6 Mya. Fossils with pongid features appear in Eurasia after c. 15 Mya, and fossils with hominid fossils appear in Africa after c.10 Mya. Instead of the traditional sav...

Three-dimensional fossils, especially those preserving soft-part anatomy, are a rich source of palaeontological information; they can, however, be difficult to work with. Imaging of serial planes through an object (tomography) allows study of both the inside and outside of three-dimensional fossils. Tomography may be performed using physical grinding or sawing coupled with photography, through ...

Globular fossils showing palintomic cell cleavage in the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation, China, are widely regarded as embryos of early metazoans, although metazoan synapomorphies, tissue differentiation, and associated juveniles or adults are lacking. We demonstrate using synchrotron-based x-ray tomographic microscopy that the fossils have features incompatible with multicellular metazoan embr...

Diversification rates are estimated from phylogenies, typically without fossils, except in paleontological studies. By nature, rate estimations depend heavily on the time data provided in phylogenies, which are divergence times and (when used) fossil ages. Among these temporal data, fossil ages are by far the most precisely known (divergence times are inferences calibrated with fossils). We pro...

Three decades ago the first convincing evidence of microbial fossils in carbonaceous chondrites was discovered and reported by Hans Dieter Pflug and his collaborators. In addition to morphology, other data, notably laser mass spectroscopy, confirmed the identification of such structures as putative bacterial fossils. Balloon-borne cryosampling of the stratosphere enables recovery of fragile com...

Quaternary sediments along the southernmost portion of the Brazilian coast are rich in fossil remains of various terrestrial and marine organisms. This paper presents a description of fossil irregular clypeasteroid echinoids found in this area, with observations on their taphonomy. The identified taxa are Encope emarginata (Leske) and Mellita quinquiesperforata (Leske), although the latter is v...

Asymmetry is a fundamental aspect of the biology of all organisms, and has a deep evolutionary history. The fossil record contains evidence of both morphological and behavioural asymmetries. Morphological asymmetry is most commonly expressed as conspicuous, directional asymmetry (either lateral asymmetry or spiral asymmetry) in body fossils. Few examples of fluctuating asymmetry, a form of subt...

Newly exposed cave sediments at the Malapa site include a flowstone layer capping the sedimentary unit containing the Australopithecus sediba fossils. Uranium-lead dating of the flowstone, combined with paleomagnetic and stratigraphic analysis of the flowstone and underlying sediments, provides a tightly constrained date of 1.977 ± 0.002 million years ago (Ma) for these fossils. This refined da...

That is, carbon-14 decays into nitrogen-14, an electron, and an electron antineutrino. Laboratory experiments demonstrate that it is not possible to predict when any given nucleus will decay. In addition, the probability of decay in the next time interval dt is completely independent of how long the nucleus has lasted up to that point, be it an attosecond or a billion years. What this means is ...