"Hybodont sharks were one of the most successful chondrichthyan lineages of all time, first occurring in the Devonian and becoming extinct in the Late Cretaceous. The end-Permian mass extinction had a limited effect on hybodont sharks, but there are fewer records of hybodonts in the Triassic than i...
"The Rhaetian (latest Triassic) succession of Doniford Bay, North Somerset has been noted as a site of fossils for over 200 years, and yet has never been described in detail despite its importance for palaeontology, for knowledge of a classic Triassic-to-Jurassic transition sequence, for structural...
"The history of Earth’s biodiversity is punctuated episodically by mass extinctions. These are characterized by major declines of taxon richness, but the accompanying ecological collapse has rarely been evaluated quantitatively. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction (PTME; ∼252 mya), as the greatest...
"Predictions of species-level extinction risk from climate change are mostly based on species distribution models (SDMs). Reviewing the literature, we summarise why the translation of SDM results to extinction risk is conceptually and methodologically challenged and why critical SDM assumptions are...
"Efficient extraction of oxygen from ambient waters played a critical role in the development of early arthropods. Maximizing gill surface area enhanced oxygen uptake ability but, with gills necessarily exposed to the external environment, also presented the issue of gill contamination. Here we doc...
"The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is a prevalent feature of modern ecosystems across diverse clades. Recognized for well over a century, the causal mechanisms for LDGs remain disputed, in part because numerous putative drivers simultaneously covary with latitude. The past provides the oppor...
"Driven by climate change, marine biodiversity is undergoing a phase of rapid change that has proven to be even faster than changes observed in terrestrial ecosystems. Understanding how these changes in species composition will affect future marine life is crucial for conservation management, espec...
"Maniraptoran dinosaurs include the ancestors of birds, and most used their hands for grasping and in flight, but early-branching maniraptorans had extraordinary claws of mysterious function. Alvarezsauroids had short, strong arms and hands with a stout, rock-pick-like, single functional finger. Th...
"Dinosaur footprints from the Upper Triassic Xujiahe Formation (T3x3) in the Sichuan Basin are the earliest records of dinosaurs from China. Hitherto, little has been known about dinosaurs from the Late Triassic of eastern Tethys and their geochronological ages. Here, we report abundant new dinosau...
"Paleontology has provided invaluable basic knowledge on the history of life on Earth. The discipline can also provide substantial knowledge to societal challenges such as climate change. The long-term perspective of climate change impacts on natural systems is both a unique selling point and a maj...
