The PaleoSynthesis Project is issuing a second call for submission of Big Questions in Paleontology.
Based at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, the objective of the PaleoSynthesis Project is to strengthen paleontology by developing a long-term research vision for the f...
"Palaeozoic hypercalcified sponges were ubiquitous Ordovician—Devonian reef builders but, despite their rich fossil record, their original skeletal mineralogy and microstructure remain poorly understood. This study provides the first application of electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) to analyse...
"Brackish-water carbonates are far less studied than their marine or limnic counterparts.However, their association with few, specialized species enables the documentation offine-scale changes in the depositional environment. The Cenozoic Mainz Basin (Germany) was only sporadically connected to the...
"Ever since Darwin, biologists have debated the relative roles of external and internal drivers of large-scale evolution. The distributions and ecology of living crocodilians are controlled by environmental factors such as temperature. Crocodilians have a rich history, including amphibious, ma...
"Variations in depositional rates affect the temporal depositional resolutions of proxies used for paleoenvironmental reconstructions; for example, condensation can make reconstructed environmental changes appear very abrupt. This is commonly addressed by transforming proxy data using age models, b...
"Seven new species of Adeonellopsis MacGillivray, 1886 are described: Adeonellopsis macewindui, A. gracilis (endemic to New Zealand), A. gemina (New Zealand and Norfolk Island shelf), A. tasmanensis (Norfolk Island shelf and Gascoyne Seamount), A. periculosa Norfolk Island shelf) and A. wassi and A...
"Birds and crocodiles show radically different patterns of brain development, and itis of interest to compare these to determine the pattern of brain growth expected in dinosaurs. Here we provide atlases of 3D brain (endocast) reconstructions for Alligator mississippiensis (alligator) and Struthio ...
"Due to the lower fossilization potential of chitin, non-mineralized cephalopod jaws and arm hooks are much more rarely preserved as fossils than the calcitic lower jaws of ammonites or the calcitized jaw apparatuses of nautilids. Here, we report such non-mineralized fossil jaws and arm hooks from ...
Dear colleagues,
After a special 2020 -- a year that has impacted all of us and we all could not have imagined it before -- we are now looking positively to the future. We look forward to 2021 and to upcoming tasks in PaleoSynthesis.
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
A...
