"Previously, palaeopathological features of fossil hardparts were often difficult to interpret because it was impossible to decipher their internal structure without destroying the specimens. We applied high-resolution computedtomography (CT) to document such internal structures. This enabled us to...
"Variation in preservation and sampling probability clouds our estimates of past biodiversity. The most extreme examples are Lagerstätten faunas and floras. Although such deposits provide a wealth of information and represent true richness better than other deposits, they can create misleading dive...
"Disparity, the diversity of form and function of organisms, can be assessed from cladistic or phenetic characters, and from discrete characters or continuous characters such as landmarks, outlines, or ratios. But do these different methods of assessing disparity provide comparable results? Here we...
"Hollow-crested lambeosaurine hadrosaurids represent one of the latest and most rapid radiations of ornithischian dinosaurs, attaining a nearly global distribution during the Late Cretaceous. Although their presence in Europe is well documented, there are questions about the origin and timing of th...
"Reconstructing the physiology of extinct organisms is key to understanding mechanisms of selective extinction during biotic crises. Soft tissues of extinct organisms are rarely preserved and, therefore, a proxy for physiological aspects is needed. Here, we examine whether cephalopod conchs yield i...
"Reproductive strategies of extinct organisms can only be recognised indirectly and hence, they are exceedingly rarely reported and tend to be speculative. Here, we present a mass-occurrence with common preservation of pairs of late Givetian (Middle Devonian) oncocerid cephalopods from Hamar Laghda...
"Mass-occurrences of oncocerid cephalopods from the Givetian of Morocco are studied regarding their pairwise pattern of clustering. The authors suggest that oncocerids were semelparous and died shortly after mating."Reproductive strategies of extinct organisms can only be recognised indirectly and ...
"The aetosaur Stagonolepis robertsoni was the first reptile to be named from the Late Triassic Lossiemouth Sandstone Formation of Morayshire. Its characteristic rectangular armour plates have been reported in isolation and in association with skeletal remains. Here we present for the first time a t...
"Rapid climate change is postulated to cause marine extinctions, especially among climate-sensitive clades, traits and regions. This premise is based on two hypotheses: (1) known individual physiological sensitivities scale up to macroecological selectivity patterns and (2) ancient hyperthermal eve...
"Sedimentary successions provide direct evidence of climate and tectonics, and these give clues about the causes of the mass extinction around the Permian–Triassic boundary. Terrestrial Permian–Triassic boundary strata in the eastern Ordos Basin, North China, include the Late Permian Sunjiagou, Ear...
