The existence of two groups of acidophilic (mostly present in soils at pH less than 5) and acidintolerant Collembolan species has been demonstrated concurrently by several authors in the course of biocoenotic studies. The examination of morphological features points to a strong relationship between acidophily and hypothetical phyletic relationships between both groups. In the light of Earth his...

The Precambrian-Cambrian transition saw the burgeoning of diverse skeletal organisms (“small shelly fossils”), represented in the fossil record by spicules, tubes, tests, conchs, shells, and a variety of sclerites and ossicles. Whereas calcareous biomineralization as such may have been facilitated by changes in ocean chemistry at this time, the utilization of biominerals in mineralized skeleton...

Fossils represent invaluable data to reconstruct the past history of life, yet fossil-rich sites are often rare and difficult to find. The traditional fossil-hunting approach focuses on small areas and has not yet taken advantage of modelling techniques commonly used in ecology to account for an organism's past distributions. We propose a new method to assist finding fossils at continental scal...

The ascent of dinosaurs in the Triassic is an exemplary evolutionary radiation, but the earliest phase of dinosaur history remains poorly understood. Body fossils of close dinosaur relatives are rare, but indicate that the dinosaur stem lineage (Dinosauromorpha) originated by the latest Anisian (ca 242-244 Ma). Here, we report footprints from the Early-Middle Triassic of Poland, stratigraphical...

Ancestral state reconstruction of discrete character traits is often vital when attempting to understand the origins and homology of traits in living species. The addition of fossils has been shown to alter our understanding of trait evolution in extant taxa, but researchers may avoid using fossils alongside extant species if only few are known, or if the designation of the trait of interest is...

INTRODUCTION The origin of Madagascar’s highly endemic vertebrate fauna remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of natural history. From what landmasses did the basal stocks of this unique and imbalanced fauna come? When and how did the ancestral populations arrive on the island? How rapidly did they diversify, and why? The most direct means of addressing these questions, and other enigmas ...

Most of life is extinct, so incorporating some fossil evidence into analyses of macroevolution is typically seen as necessary to understand the diversification of life and patterns of morphological evolution. Here we test the effects of inclusion of fossils in a study of the body size evolution of afrotherian mammals, a clade that includes the elephants, sea cows and elephant shrews. We find th...

Pecoits et al. (Reports, 29 June 2012, p. 1693) describe bilaterian trace fossils and assign them an Ediacaran age based on the age of a granite interpreted as intrusive. We argue that the granite is not intrusive but in fact represents the basement of the sedimentary succession. Moreover, we show that identical trace fossils occur in nearby Carboniferous-Permian glacigenic rocks.

Traditionally, Middle Pleistocene hominin fossils that cannot be allocated to Homo erectus sensu lato or modern H. sapiens have been assigned to different specific taxa. For example, in eastern Asia, these hominin fossils have been classified as archaic, early, or premodern H. sapiens. An increasing number of Middle Pleistocene hominin fossils are currently being assigned to H. heidelbergensis....

The evolutionary history of Eucalyptus and the eucalypts, the larger clade of seven genera including Eucalyptus that today have a natural distribution almost exclusively in Australasia, is poorly documented from the fossil record. Little physical evidence exists bearing on the ancient geographical distributions or morphologies of plants within the clade. Herein, we introduce fossil material of ...