Dear all,
New partial fossil of fish with enamel in its scales and skull – but not its teeth !
See manuscript in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature15259.html
BR,
Nicolas
Category Archives: News
New species of Homo from South Africa – Welcome Homo naledi
http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560
Berger, L. R., Hawks, J., de Ruiter, D. J., Churchill, S. E., Schmid, P., Delezene, L. K., Kivell, T. L., Garvin, H. M., Williams, S. A., DeSilva, J. M., Skinner, M. M., Musiba, C. M., Cameron, N., Holliday, T. W., Harcourt-Smith, W., Ackermann, R. R., Bastir, M., Bogin, B., Bolter, D., Brophy, J., Cofran, Z. D., Congdon, K. A., Deane, A. S., Dembo, M., Drapeau, M., Elliott, M. C., Feuerriegel, E. M., Garcia-Martinez, D., Green, D. J., Gurtov, A., Irish, J. D., Kruger, A., Laird, M. F., Marchi, D., Meyer, M. R., Nalla, S., Negash, E. W., Orr, C. M., Radovcic, D., Schroeder, L., Scott, J. E., Throckmorton, Z., Tocheri, M. W., VanSickle, C., Walker, C. S., Wei, P. & Zipfel, B., 2015: Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa.
–eLife: Vol. 4, in press [doi: 10.7554/eLife.09560]
Also featured in National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150910-human-evolution-change/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=16&v=qPId4HffN3A
A Middle Triassic stem-turtle and the evolution of the turtle body plan
A new stem-turtle, Pappochelys rosinae, is structurally and chronologically intermediate between the stem-turtles Eunotosaurus and Odontochelys and is from the late Middle Triassic of Germany (Ladinian; ∼240 million years ago). The three taxa share anteroposteriorly broad trunk ribs that are T-shaped in cross-section and bear sculpturing, elongate dorsal vertebrae, and modified limb girdles. Pappochelys closely resembles Odontochelys in various features of the limb girdles. Unlike Odontochelys, it has a cuirass of robust paired gastralia in place of a plastron. Pappochelys provides new evidence that the plastron partly formed through serial fusion of gastralia. The skull of Pappochelys has small upper and ventrally open lower temporal fenestrae, supporting the hypothesis of diapsid affinities of turtles.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14472.html
Life reconstruction:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/24/416657576/how-the-turtle-got-its-shell
Comments on Jurassic World in IltaSanomat by Maija & Mikko (in Finnish)
All,
Maija Karala and I gave a little interview and opinions to IltaSanomat of the Jurassic World.
Unfortunately it’s is only in Finnish.
http://www.istv.fi/viihde/vid-1435047061124.html
Those who haven’t yet watched the trailers, do so, it helps to understand some comments.
http://www.jurassicworldmovie.com/#
–Mikko H.
More:
http://www.iltasanomat.fi/elokuvat/art-1435194630387.html
-Allu
Monsterous! – Head of Hallucigenia revealed
From the BBC newspiece:
“When we put it into the electron microscope, we were delighted to see not just a tiny pair of eyes looking back at us, but also beneath them a really cheeky semi-circular smile”.
Smith, M. R. & Caron, J.-B., 2015: Hallucigenia’s head and the pharyngeal armature of early ecdysozoans.
–Nature: in press [doi: 10.1038/nature14573]
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14573.html
Abstract:
The molecularly defined clade Ecdysozoa comprises the panarthropods (Euarthropoda, Onychophora and Tardigrada) and the cycloneuralian worms (Nematoda, Nematomorpha, Priapulida, Loricifera and Kinorhyncha). These disparate phyla are united by their means of moulting, but otherwise share few morphological characters-none of which has a meaningful fossilization potential. As such, the early evolutionary history of the group as a whole is largely uncharted. Here we redescribe the 508-million-year-old stem-group onychophoran Hallucigenia sparsa from the mid-Cambrian Burgess Shale. We document an elongate head with a pair of simple eyes, a terminal buccal chamber containing a radial array of sclerotized elements, and a differentiated foregut that is lined with acicular teeth. The radial elements and pharyngeal teeth resemble the sclerotized circumoral elements and pharyngeal teeth expressed in tardigrades, stem-group euarthropods and cycloneuralian worms. Phylogenetic results indi!
cate that equivalent structures characterized the ancestral panarthropod and, seemingly, the ancestral ecdysozoan, demonstrating the deep homology of panarthropod and cycloneuralian mouthparts, and providing an anatomical synapomorphy for the ecdysozoan supergroup.
3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Turkana, Kenya
As you might all remember, Meave Leakey talked quite a bit about these tools in her talk here in Helsinki, and now they’ve been published!
Nice write-up in the BBC website:
Oldest stone tools pre-date earliest humans: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32804177
The actual paper:
3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya
Abstract: Human evolutionary scholars have long supposed that the earliest stone tools were made by the genus Homo and that this technological development was directly linked to climate change and the spread of savannah grasslands. New fieldwork in West Turkana, Kenya, has identified evidence of much earlier hominin technological behaviour. We report the discovery of Lomekwi 3, a 3.3-million-year-old archaeological site where in situ stone artefacts occur in spatiotemporal association with Pliocene hominin fossils in a wooded palaeoenvironment. The Lomekwi 3 knappers, with a developing understanding of stone’s fracture properties, combined core reduction with battering activities. Given the implications of the Lomekwi 3 assemblage for models aiming to converge environmental change, hominin evolution and technological origins, we propose for it the name ‘Lomekwian’, which predates the Oldowan by 700,000 years and marks a new beginning to the known archaeological record.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7552/full/nature14464.html
Co-occurrence of pliopithecoid and hominoid primates in the fossil record: An ecometric analysis
Co-occurrence of pliopithecoid and hominoid primates in the fossil record: An ecometric analysis
Leena Sukselainen, Mikael Fortelius, Terry Harrison
Journal of Human Evolution, Available online 14 May 2015
Both pliopithecoid and hominoid primates were widely distributed throughout Eurasia during the Miocene but are known to have coexisted at only a few localities. It has been speculated that their different habitat preferences permitted only minimal overlap under special environmental conditions. Here we study the context for pliopithecoid and hominoid co-occurrence by assessing taxonomically-based palaeoecological diversity of associated fossil mammals and by direct ecometric analysis based on hypsodonty of mammalian herbivores. Our results show that pliopithecoids persistently inhabited more humid environments compared to the other primate groups studied, suggesting an inability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. The opportunity for hominoids and pliopithecoids to co-occur appears to have been restricted by niche conservatism in the latter group. Our study also indicates that direct ecometric analysis gives a better separation of the ecological preferences of these primate clades than do analyses of taxonomically-based community structure.
JEZ Special Issue on Turtle Origins and Evolution, freely available
Dear colleagues:
The new Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution 324(3): 169–314 is a Special Issue on Turtle Origins and Evolution that I have edited.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.v324.3/issuetoc
This issue is inspired by a symposium that was held at the 10th International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology, and many participants from that symposium have contributed papers here. All articles are “Freely Available” for the next three months.
Sincerely,
Jacqueline
****
The dawn of chelonian research: Turtles between comparative anatomy and embryology in the 19th century (pages 169–180)
Kate MacCord, Guido Caniglia, Jacqueline E. Moustakas-Verho and Ann C. Burke
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22587
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22587/abstract
****
The origin of turtles: A paleontological perspective (pages 181–193)
Walter G. Joyce
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22609
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22609/abstract
****
The evolutionary origin of the turtle shell and its dependence on the axial arrest of the embryonic rib cage (pages 194–207)
Tatsuya Hirasawa, Juan Pascual-Anaya, Naoki Kamezaki, Mari Taniguchi, Kanako Mine and Shigeru Kuratani
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22579
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22579/abstract
****
Emerging from the rib: Resolving the turtle controversies (pages 208–220)
Ritva Rice, Paul Riccio, Scott F. Gilbert and Judith Cebra-Thomas
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22600
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22600/abstract
****
The integumental appendages of the turtle shell: An evo-devo perspective (pages 221–229)
Jacqueline E. Moustakas-Verho and Gennadii O. Cherepanov
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22619
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22619/abstract
***
Modeling neck mobility in fossil turtles (pages 230–243)
Ingmar Werneburg, Juliane K. Hinz, Michaela Gumpenberger, Virginie Volpato, Nikolay Natchev and Walter G. Joyce
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22557
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22557/abstract
****
On the homology of the shoulder girdle in turtles (pages 244–254)
Hiroshi Nagashima, Fumiaki Sugahara, Masaki Takechi, Noboru Sato and Shigeru Kuratani
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22584
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22584/abstract
****
A comparative examination of odontogenic gene expression in both toothed and toothless amniotes (pages 255–269)
Alexis J. Lainoff, Jacqueline E. Moustakas-Verho, Diane Hu, Aki Kallonen, Ralph S. Marcucio and Leslea J. Hlusko
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22594
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22594/abstract
*****
Do turtles follow the rules? Latitudinal gradients in species richness, body size, and geographic range area of the world’s turtles (pages 270–294)
Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Robert W. Burroughs and Chris. R. Feldman
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22602
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22602/abstract
*****
Loggerhead sea turtle environmental sex determination: Implications of moisture and temperature for climate change based predictions for species survival (pages 295–314)
Jeanette Wyneken and Alexandra Lolavar
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22620
Wiley has published a version of this article without corrections following review, and we are currently waiting for them to publish the finished article as an erratum.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.22620/abstract
****
Sexual dimorphism in Stegosaurus!
Saitta ET (2015) Evidence for Sexual Dimorphism in the Plated Dinosaur Stegosaurus mjosi (Ornithischia, Stegosauria) from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Western USA. PLoS ONE 10(4): e0123503. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0123503
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123503
Conclusive evidence for sexual dimorphism in non-avian dinosaurs has been elusive. Here it is shown that dimorphism in the shape of the dermal plates of Stegosaurus mjosi (Upper Jurassic, western USA) does not result from non-sex-related individual, interspecific, or ontogenetic variation and is most likely a sexually dimorphic feature. One morph possessed wide, oval plates 45% larger in surface area than the tall, narrow plates of the other morph. Intermediate morphologies are lacking as principal component analysis supports marked size- and shape-based dimorphism. In contrast, many non-sex-related individual variations are expected to show intermediate morphologies. Taphonomy of a new quarry in Montana (JRDI 5ES Quarry) shows that at least five individuals were buried in a single horizon and were not brought together by water or scavenger transportation. This new site demonstrates co-existence, and possibly suggests sociality, between two morphs that only show dimorphism in their plates. Without evidence for niche partitioning, it is unlikely that the two morphs represent different species. Histology of the new specimens in combination with studies on previous specimens indicates that both morphs occur in fully-grown individuals. Therefore, the dimorphism is not a result of ontogenetic change. Furthermore, the two morphs of plates do not simply come from different positions on the back of a single individual. Plates from all positions on the body can be classified as one of the two morphs, and previously discovered, isolated specimens possess only one morph of plates. Based on the seemingly display-oriented morphology of plates, female mate choice was likely the driving evolutionary mechanism rather than male-male competition. Dinosaur ornamentation possibly served similar functions to the ornamentation of modern species. Comparisons to ornamentation involved in sexual selection of extant species, such as the horns of bovids, may be appropriate in predicting the function of some dinosaur ornamentation.
But wait, there’s more!
—
Jacqueline
Jacqueline
Island Biogeography Revisited: an online experiment on book reading club
GrrlScientist (of the Guardian, among other things) and BiK-F / Senckenberg are doing an interesting reading experiment:
Discussion of the first chapter online: