"Species are distributed unevenly across the surface of Earth. More species are found in the warm tropics than in cool temperate regions. This pattern was first recognized over two centuries ago by Alexander von Humboldt, with his observation “The nearer we approach the tropics, the greater the inc...
"The role of time (i.e. taxa ages) in phylogeny has been a source of intense debate within palaeontology for decades and has not yet been resolved fully. The fossilised birth-death range process is a model that explicitly accounts for information about species through time. It presents a fresh oppo...
"The fossil record is the primary source of information on how biodiversity has varied in deep time, providing unique insight on the long-term dynamics of diversification and their drivers. However, interpretations of fossil record diversity patterns have been much debated, with a traditional focus...
"Animals originated in the oceans and evolved there for hundreds of millions of years before adapting to terrestrial environments. Today, oceans cover more than two-thirds of Earth and generate as much primary production as land. The path from the first macrobiota to modern marine biodiversity invo...
"Septal crowding is widely known as a sign of maturity in conchs of ammonoids and nautiloids. However, reduced septal spacing may also occur as a consequence of adverse ecological conditions. Here, we address the question how septal spacing varied through ontogeny in representatives of some of the ...
"It was 25 years ago this October that one of the most shocking discoveries in palaeontology was announced: a dinosaur with feathers! Everyone knows that birds have feathers, and indeed feathers are the defining characteristic of birds, so how could some other kind of animal have feathers? Back the...
"AMBI and M-AMBI are widely used biotic indices for assessing the ecological quality status of benthic macroinvertebrate communities in estuarine and coastal soft-bottom habitats. Identifying the species needed for estimating these indices, however, is both expensive and time-consuming, and require...
"Septal crowding is widely known as a sign of maturity in conchs of ammonoids and nautiloids. However, reduced septal spacing may also occur as a consequence of adverse ecological conditions. Here, we address the question how septal spacing varied through ontogeny in representatives of some of the ...
"Heterocorals represent an enigmatic group of Palaeozoic corals, known from relatively short time intervals in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. The major differences between Heterocorallia and other Palaeozoic corals are the lack of an external theca (epitheca), lack of calices and the prese...
"Like other soft-bodied organisms, ctenophores (comb jellies) produce fossils only under exceptional taphonomic conditions. Here, we present the first record of a Late Devonian ctenophore from the Escuminac Formation from Miguasha in eastern Canada. Based on the 18-fold symmetry of this disc-shaped...
