PALAEONTOLOGY[online]

Feb12021

Fossil Focus: Oviraptorosauria

Fossil Focus

by Waisum Ma Introduction: Oviraptorosauria is a group of theropod dinosaurs that first appeared around 125 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous period. They evolved into diverse forms before being wiped out 66 million years ago in the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, an event that killed all the non-avian dinosaurs. The first known oviraptorosaurian — called Oviraptor — was unearthed in 1923 by the American Museum of Natural History expedition team in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. It was found near some eggs assumed to be from the dinosaur Protoceratops, which led researchers to infer that Oviraptor stole the eggs of other species — the name means ‘egg thief’. This interpretation was refuted after researchers discovered oviraptorosaurian fossils brooding nests of t...

Dec162019

Fossil Focus: Stepping through time with tetrapod trace fossils

Fossil Focus

by Hannah C. Bird Introduction: Ichnology is the study of trace fossils, the physical evidence for the activities of organisms that lived millions of years ago. Trace fossils depict activities such as walking, resting, feeding and burrowing, which can be represented by tracks ranging from recognizable large footprints to long, grooved trails (Fig. 1). One organism can be responsible for multiple trackways: for example, the extinct invertebrate arthropods called trilobites are known to have produced the burrowing trace Cruziana as well as the resting trace Rusophycus. Figure 1 — Examples of trace fossils preserved in non-marine environments (after Bromley, 1996), including scorpion trackways (1), crustacean burrows (5; Cruziana problematica), arthropod trackways (8, 9), fish swimm...

Sep22019

Patterns In Palaeontology: Digitally Peering Inside Fossil Skulls

Patterns in Palaeontology

by Charlotte M. Bird 1 Introduction: Imagine you are an avid fossil hunter and have just dug up a skull of an extinct vertebrate. You are the first human ever to see it. Not only is that amazing, but you are also at the start of a journey into discovering how this organism lived: whether it was diurnal (active during the day) or nocturnal, whether it hunted above ground or burrowed, had poor vision or an exceptional sense of smell. Despite the millions of years that may have passed, the growing field of virtual palaeontology provides a new world of analysis techniques that can help palaeontologists to peer inside the skull and uncover some truly fascinating insights. What are digital endocasts? Virtual Palaeontology is the non-destructive study of fossils using digital method...

Apr12019

Patterns in Palaeontology: The Real Jurassic Park

Patterns in Palaeontology

by Jack Wilkin*1 Introduction: The Morrison Formation is renowned worldwide as one of the world’s most significant locations for dinosaur fossils. It covers more than 150 million square kilometres, running from Alberta in Canada to New Mexico in the United States, and from Idaho across to Nebraska (Fig. 1). The Morrison dates to the Oxfordian stage of the late Jurassic period, some 155 million to 148 million years ago. It is what is known as a Konzentrat-Lagerstätten, meaning that it has a very high concentration of fossil remains, with extensive bone beds created by flash floods depositing lots of bones in one place. The Morrison provides palaeontologists with remarkable insight into a late Jurassic terrestrial ecosystem. Not only does the formation contain some of the largest din...

Feb12019

Perspectives — Palaeontology in 2018

Perspectives

by The Palaeontology [online] editorial board*1 Introduction: At the turn of most years, the some of the editorial board at Palaeontology [online] takes the opportunity to reflect on the past year in palaeontology. Given that we published a wonderful overview of Diploporitans in January, this year we’ve moved our look over our favourite studies from last year to February. Palaeontology and associated disciplines are fast-moving and exciting areas of science — looking back at 2018 lets us highlight just a few of the key developments that really show this. Picking just one article each is difficult, and we have been forced to miss out many of the hundreds of exciting papers published in the past 12 months. Nevertheless, we hope that our choices reflect the breadth and depth of palaeob...

Jan12019

Fossil Focus: Diploporitans

Fossil Focus

by Sarah L. Sheffield*1 Introduction: Echinoderms, a group of marine animals that includes familiar organisms such as sea stars and sea urchins, were much more diverse in the past than they are today. There are five living classes of echinoderms (sea stars, sea urchins, brittle stars, sea cucumbers and crinoids), but more than 20 extinct classes are known only from the fossil record. During the Palaeozoic Era (542 million to 251 million years ago), especially, echinoderms were incredibly diverse and thrived all over the globe (Fig. 1). This was a time of significant environmental change, with the climate ranging from very warm oceans with high sea levels and high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to much colder oceans, with extensive glacial ice. By studying how fossil ...

Dec12018

Patterns in Palaeontology — Deducing the tree of life

Patterns in Palaeontology

by Russell Garwood*1 Introduction “Increasing knowledge leads to triumphant loss of clarity” — Palaeontologist Alfred Romer Some areas of life and human endeavour have the luxury of certainty. Along these paths of discovery, there are things we can know to be true or false. In others, it is impossible to assess the concept of truth: it can’t be established, or just isn’t a consideration. And between these extremes is a whole mess of important stuff. Palaeontology almost always lies somewhere on this gradation. Researchers studying past life are often juggling multiple layers of uncertainty. We try to balance the need to say something useful — something with meaning, that moves a field and its consensus closer to the truth — with the risk of over-interpreting our data. If the data is t...

Nov12018

Education and Outreach: Cosplay for Science Initiative and the Natural History Museum of Pokémon

Education and Outreach

by Gabriel Santos1 In the world of education, we often hear complaints that people know more about celebrities and fictional characters than about science. Taking a moment to scroll through Twitter or Instagram, it can be easy to agree with such complaints. It can be a constant struggle for educators to find a way to make abstract concepts from science more interesting than ideas from fiction, like the Force or giant robots. But what if there were a way to use people’s fascination with pop culture as a tool for education? What if there were a way to use pop culture to make science relatable and accessible? What if there were a way to use pop culture to make scientists and educators more approachable? That is where the Cosplay for Science Initiative comes in. The Cosplay for Science I...

Oct12018

Fossil Focus: Calcareous nannofossils: the best things are microscopic

Fossil Focus

by Amy P. Jones1 Introduction: Calcareous nannofossils — words that are, perhaps, unfamiliar to you. You might never have stumbled upon them before … So what are they? They are the fossil remains of coccolithophores: single-celled marine algae from the phylum Haptophyta and division Prymnesiophyceae. They exist in great abundance around the world in the oceans, and have done for over 200 million years. They are also known as the grass of the sea, and are regarded as one of the most important phytoplankton groups in the oceans owing to their relationship with the carbon cycle. They provide valuable proxies to help us understand conditions throughout geological history, because their evolution shows consistent and resilient patterns. Nannofossils are composed of calcium carbonate, also ...

Sep12018

Fossil Focus: Paracrinoids

Fossil Focus

by Maggie R. Limbeck*1 Introduction: The oceans of the Palaeozoic era (541 million to 252 million years ago) were full of animals that we are familiar with, such as fish, snails, and coral, but also included many organisms that look almost nothing like their living relatives. The further back in time we go, for instance to the Cambrian and Ordovician periods (541 million to 444 million years ago), the greater the difference in body plans, or morphologies, compared to modern species. Echinoderms are an excellent example of this — living members of the group, such as starfish and sea urchins, are easily recognizable, but many of their extinct, fossilized relatives from hundreds of millions of years ago look very different. Understanding these different body forms is important to palaeontol...