Forests around the world are facing climate change. Increased drought stress and severe heat waves in recent decades have negatively impacted on forest health, making them more vulnerable prone to dieback mortality phenomena. Although term vulnerability is used indicate an increased susceptibility of forests change with a worsening their vigour status that can compromise ability respond further...

Climate changes affect the distribution and abundance of organisms, often via in species interactions. Most animals experience predation, a number models have investigated how climate fluctuations can influence predator–prey dynamics by affecting prey through resource availability. However, field studies shown that vulnerability is key feature determining outcome interactions, which also varies...

The Beaufort Group of the main Karoo Basin South Africa records two major extinction events terrestrial vertebrates in late Palaeozoic. oldest these has been dated to Capitanian and is characterized by dinocephalian therapsids bradysaurian pareiasaurs near top Tapinocephalus Assemblage Zone. Faunal turnover associated with dinocephalians evident vertebrate faunas from elsewhere Pangaea but it c...

Desert mound springs of the Great Artesian Basin in central Australia maintain an endemic fauna that have historically been considered ubiquitous throughout all of the springs. Recent studies, however, have shown that several endemic invertebrate species are genetically highly structured and contain previously unrecognised species, suggesting that individuals may be geographically 'stranded in ...

BACKGROUND Australian scorpions have received far less attention from researchers than their overseas counterparts. Here we provide the first insight into the molecular variation and evolutionary history of the endemic Australian scorpion Urodacus yaschenkoi. Also known as the inland robust scorpion, it is widely distributed throughout arid zones of the continent and is emerging as a model orga...

Sediments from Xinyun Lake in central Yunnan, southwest China, provide a record of environmental history since the Holocene. With the application of multi-proxy indicators (total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), δ13C and δ15N isotopes, C/N ratio, grain size, magnetic susceptibility (MS) and CaCO3 content), as well as accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C datings, four major climatic...

[1] The northwest Argentine Andes constitute a premier natural laboratory to assess the complex interactions between isolated uplifts, orographic precipitation gradients, and related erosion and sedimentation patterns. Here we present new stratigraphic observations and age information from intermontane basin sediments to elucidate the Neogene to Quaternary shortening history and associated sedi...

Fossil evidence is indispensable for studying the derivation, divergence, and dispersal of squirrels as they responded to global Cenozoic climatic paleoenvironmental change. Among these fossil records, earliest known definitive in Eurasia occur after Eocene/Oligocene Boundary are slightly younger than oldest records North America. Here, we report discovery two new extinct large squirrel species...

The locality of El Salt (Alcoi, Spain) is a key site for understanding the extirpation Neanderthals in eastern part Iberia. In this paper, we analyse an assemblage amphibians and reptiles from Stratigraphic Unit V (45.2 ± 3.4 ka to 44.7 ka), which corresponds one last regional records Neanderthals, improve knowledge palaeoecology palaeoclimate event. comprises three anurans (Pelodytes sp., Alyt...

Asian mineral dust has been studied extensively for its role in affecting regional-to global-scale climate and deposits, which enable reconstructing atmospheric circulation the past. However, timing origin of deposits remain debated. Numerous loess records have reported across continent with ages varying from Miocene to Eocene linked various mechanisms including global cooling, Tibetan Plateau ...