"Today parasites comprise a huge proportion of living biodiversity and play a major role in shaping community structure. Given their ecological significance, parasite extinctions could result in massive cascading effects across ecosystems. It is therefore crucial that we have a way of estimating th...
"The biggest known mass extinction in the history of animal life occurred at the Permian–Triassic boundary and has often been linked to global warming. Previous studies have suggested that a geologically rapid (<40 kyr) temperature increase of more than 10°C occurred simultaneously with the main...
"Geographic areas that are exceptionally rich in species, ecologically distinct and/or show high endemism (species occurring in that defined geographic area and nowhere else) are broadly recognised as biodiversity hotspots and prioritised for conservation. Here, we assess the impacts and vulnerabil...
"Hybodontiform shark teeth, cephalic and fin spines as well as placoid scales are reported here for the first time from the continental, Lower Triassic Dongchuan Formation near the village of Zhaojia (Huize County, Yunnan Province) in south-west China. The isolated teeth are assigned to three unide...
"Insular woodiness (IW)—the evolutionary transition from herbaceousness toward woodiness on islands—is one of the most iconic features of island floras. Since pioneering work by Darwin and Wallace, a number of drivers of IW have been proposed, such as 1) competition for sunlight requiring plants wi...
"Allometry is vital for understanding the mechanisms underlying phenotypic evolution. Despite a large body of literature on allometry, studies based on fossil time series are limited for solitary organisms and nonexistent for colonial organisms. Allometric relationships have been found to be relati...
"Today parasites comprise a huge proportion of living biodiversity and play a major role in shaping community structure. Given their ecological significance, parasite extinctions could result in massive cascading effects across ecosystems. It is therefore crucial that we have a way of estimating th...
The time has come! Some time ago, FAU announced the "Open Research Challenge". Now the winner The time has come! Some time ago, FAU announced the "Open Research Challenge".
1. Fossil occurrence databases are indispensable resources to the palaeontological community, yet present unique data clean...
"The driver of the Early–Middle Triassic biotic recovery on land following the end-Permian crisis is puzzling. Here, we show the biotic recovery was gradual and spanned up to 8 Myr after the end-Permian mass extinction, based on continuous, well-dated sections over large areas in the northeastern O...
"The end-Permian mass extinction led to the disappearance of >81% of marine species and the collapse of marine ecosystems. Despite the progress made in recent years, the severity of the impact of the mass extinction upon some groups still remains unclear. Horseshoe crabs are a typical example am...
