Team Publications

Publications by the members of the Paleosynthesis Team and Scientific Advisory Board

301 to 306 of 504

01DEC 2021
Team Publications
Predation pressure in the Mesozoic
“The Middle Triassic Luoping Biota in south-west China represents the inception of modern marine ecosystems, with abundant and diverse arthropods, fishes and marine reptiles, indicating recovery from the Permian–Triassic mass extinction. Here we report a new specimen of the predatory marine reptile Diandongosaurus, based on a nearly complete skeleton. The specimen is larger than most […]
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29NOV 2021
Team Publications
Evolvability in the fossil record
“The concept of evolvability—the capacity of a population to produce and maintain evolutionarily relevant variation—has become increasingly prominent in evolutionary biology. Paleontology has a long history of investigating questions of evolvability, but paleontological thinking has tended to neglect recent discussions, because many tools used in the current evolvability literature are challenging to apply to the […]“The concept of evolvability—the capacity of a population to produce and maintain evolutionarily relevant variation—has become increasingly prominent in evolutionary biology. Paleontology has a long history of investigating questions of evolvability, but paleontological thinking has tended to neglect recent discussions, because many tools used in the current evolvability literature are challenging to apply to the […]
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23NOV 2021
Team Publications
Loss of functional diversity
“Human impacts reshape ecological communities through the extinction and introduction of species. The combined impact of these factors depends on whether non-native species fill the functional roles of extinct species, thus buffering the loss of functional diversity. This question has been difficult to address, because comprehensive information about past extinctions and their traits is generally […]“Human impacts reshape ecological communities through the extinction and introduction of species. The combined impact of these factors depends on whether non-native species fill the functional roles of extinct species, thus buffering the loss of functional diversity. This question has been difficult to address, because comprehensive information about past extinctions and their traits is generally […]
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22NOV 2021
Team Publications
Origins of modern biodiversity
“Biodiversity today has the unusual property that 85% of plant and animal species live on land rather than in the sea, and half of these live in tropical rainforests. An explosive boost to terrestrial diversity occurred from c. 100–50 million years ago, the Late Cretaceous and early Palaeogene. During this interval, the Earth-life system on […]
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22NOV 2021
Team Publications
Evolutionary rates in lepidosaurs
“Biodiversity today is uneven, with equally ancient sister groups containing few or many species. It has often been assumed that high biodiversity indicates fast evolution, and yet in a classic work in 1944 George Simpson suggested that fast evolution might generate instability and extinction, and that slow evolution led to high biodiversity. Here we show […]
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22NOV 2021
Team Publications
Larger offspring associated with lower temperatures
“Among life history traits, offspring size has one of the most direct impacts on fitness, influencing growth, recruitment and survival of the individual, therefore affecting population, and ultimately macroevolutionary outcomes. Despite its ecological and evolutionary importance, little is known about how offspring size varies in lineages over macroevolutionary timescales, especially for colonial organisms. Here, we […]“Among life history traits, offspring size has one of the most direct impacts on fitness, influencing growth, recruitment and survival of the individual, therefore affecting population, and ultimately macroevolutionary outcomes. Despite its ecological and evolutionary importance, little is known about how offspring size varies in lineages over macroevolutionary timescales, especially for colonial organisms. Here, we […]
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