The study of ancient life through fossils, including evolution, extinction, paleoecology, biostratigraphy, and the reconstruction of past environments and biodiversity through geological time
5 papersStone tools found at the Calio site in Sulawesi, Indonesia, date to at least 1.04 million years ago, potentially pushing back the timeline for hominin presence on the island to around the same time as Flores, if not earlier. This challenges previous understandings of hominin dispersal in the region, as it suggests Sulawesi may have been populated before other islands like Luzon.
Evidence from fossil distribution, anatomical features like the sail and tail, and calcium isotope analysis suggest that Spinosaurus was more likely a shoreline wader than a fully aquatic predator. Comparisons with modern waders and biomechanical models support this theory, while diving and pursuit predator ideas are questioned due to potential buoyancy and maneuverability limitations.
The paper presents a new map and shapefile of the 57 biogeographic provinces of the Neotropical region. These provinces are delimited based on a combination of endemism and ecoregions, and are classified into three subregions and two transition zones.
Researchers found evidence of a kleptoparasitic relationship between a tube-dwelling organism and a brachiopod host in the early Cambrian. The tube organisms attached to the brachiopods, stealing their food and reducing their biomass, which suggests a parasitic interaction rather than a mutually beneficial one.
This paper describes the updated features and functionalities of the 'phytools' R package, a widely used tool for phylogenetic comparative methods. It provides multiple example workflows illustrating the use of 'phytools' for analyzing discrete and continuous character evolution, diversification rates, and visualizing phylogenetic data, including stochastic character mapping, ancestral state reconstruction, and lineage-through-time plots.