Article tackles the megabias of the diminishing soft-body preservation in the fossil record:
The explanation rests on the proposition, that it was caused by the proliferation of colagen enzyme diversity in bacteria and archaea.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Whaaat? Flightless bird ("Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis... from southeastern China") in the Jurassic? Dude you literally just learned to fly and you are immediately dropping this superpower.
Reminds me the story of limb loss in early tetrapods
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

What a wonderful reconstruction. Two alien-looking stem crocodiles enjoying rather unusual prey -- relatives of Archosaurs--turtles. Reminds us that the evolution of crocodiles was dynamic and current forms cover small portion of their diversity.
doi.org/10.1017/jpa....
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

So, apparently the genetic diversity and the presence of structure is not a remedy for the extinction. At least for endemics on islands.
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Rudists are some of my favorite extinct forms of life. Bivalves which wanted to become corals, while growing to the size of small tree trunks.
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

A new study by Andrii Rozhok, Niles Eldredge, and James DeGregori which presents a novel population genetic mechanism of evolution—the directional selection (of deviating forms) also selects, as a dynamic spandrel, higher mutation rate forms!
🧪 #Paleobio #EvoBio
doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

'Phylogenetic jungle' of early ecomorphologically diverse actinopretygians:
"Early actinopterygians are a paraphyletic assemblage of ~600 extinct species divided between ~22 named clades and the “palaeoniscoids,” a..wastebasket"
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

"Vrba'ian" approach in understanding evolution connecting morphology, phylogeny, and the development 👇
"the earliest...evidence of the African buffalo lineage...conserved allometry and heterochrony in the evolutionary history of Syncerus"
sciencepress.mnhn.fr/sites/defaul...
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

'Tug of war' in major bryozoan clades, and the environment-dependence of their dominance:
"...lower average temperatures and greater seasonality could give cyclostome bryozoans with relatively slower metabolism an edge in higher latitudes."
academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

This really cheared my Friday: Paleoartists you are supported even by the pope 👇
#Paleobio

The temporal inertia, legacy and 'memory' causing regional-scale extinction in the Ordovician:
"broad accumulations of linguliformean shells and phosphatic hardground clasts...released phosphorous nutrients into the overlying water."
www.lyellcollection.org/doi/abs/10.1...
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Loooong boi.
Tanystropheus at Urweltmuseum Oberfranken (Bayreuth).
#paleontology #paleobio #fossils #Triassic #Paläontologie

If we call a modern species poor deeply diverging lineage or "depauperon" (as it is dubbed in the article) the "basal" lineage, then we should admit that the hominids including humans are the "basal" stock for Old World monkey. Right? 😉
academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...
🧪 #Paleobio #EvoBio

Updated Fossilworks
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Interesting article on the geophysical and geodynamic constraints of the Early Earth in the Hadean on the origins and persistence of the RNA organisms:
"...frequent global sterilization events persisted up until about 4.4 Ga..."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Looks liek a promissing general approach for the choice of characters (in this application -- the genomic ones). Complexity approach on improving the phylogenetic inference with highlighting highly heterogenous regions of the genome.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧪 #EvoBio #Paleobio

Just a reminder, that birds had 1.6 times more history before the K-Pg impact than the duration of the Cenozoic Era.
My bet would be that we are severely underestimating Mesozoic diversity of birds (stem or crown).
www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio

Today I've learned that Douglas Erwin is (classical) palaeontology doomer. Is it that bad in US palaeontology?
journals.publishing.umich.edu/ptpbio/artic...
🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio

The fossil record not only constrains the evolution in the space-time. But it also gives the insights on the physical properties of the world at macro scale. Think about this find of Miocene capybaras in Atacama, which points to recency of the desert.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧪⚒️ #Paleobio

Thank you for sharing this. Apparently the 3rd Edition of the Principles of Paleontology is freely downloadable.
🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio