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At least 685 records · Page 38Linked to original sources
PubMed2005

Palaeoecology: a gigantic fossil arthropod trackway.

A unique, complex trackway has been discovered in Scotland: it was made roughly 330 million years ago by a huge, six-legged water scorpion that was about 1.6 m long and a metre wide. To my knowledge, this is not only the largest terrestrial trackway of a walking arthropod to be found so far, but is also the first record of locomotion on land for a species of Hibbertopterus (Eurypterida). This evidence of lumbering movement indicates that these giant arthropods, now extinct, could survive out of water at a time when the earliest tetrapods were making their transition to the land.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

General patterns of taxonomic and biomass partitioning in extant and fossil plant communities.

A central goal of evolutionary ecology is to identify the general features maintaining the diversity of species assemblages. Understanding the taxonomic and ecological characteristics of ecological communities provides a means to develop and test theories about the processes that regulate species coexistence and diversity. Here, using data from woody plant communities from different biogeographic regions, continents and geologic time periods, we show that the number of higher taxa is a general power-function of species richness that is significantly different from randomized assemblages. In general, we find that local communities are characterized by fewer higher taxa than would be expected by chance. The degree of taxonomic diversity is influenced by modes of dispersal and potential biotic interactions. Further, changes in local diversity are accompanied by regular changes in the partitioning of community biomass between taxa that are also described by a power function. Our results indicate that local and regional processes have consistently regulated community diversity and biomass partitioning for millions of years.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Cambrian origins and affinities of an enigmatic fossil group of arthropods.

Euthycarcinoids are one of the most enigmatic arthropod groups, having been assigned to nearly all major clades of Arthropoda. Recent work has endorsed closest relationships with crustaceans or a myriapod-hexapod assemblage, a basal position in the Euarthropoda, or a placement in the Hexapoda or hexapod stem group. Euthycarcinoids are known from 13 species ranging in age from Late Ordovician or Early Silurian to Middle Triassic, all in freshwater or brackish water environments. Here we describe a euthycarcinoid from marine strata in Argentina dating from the latest Cambrian period, extending the group's record back as much as 50 million years. Despite its antiquity and marine occurrence, the Cambrian species demonstrates that morphological details were conserved in the transition to fresh water. Trackways in the same unit as the euthycarcinoid strengthen arguments that similar traces of subaerial origin from Cambro-Ordovician rocks were made by euthycarcinoids. Large mandibles in euthycarcinoids are confirmed by the Cambrian species. A morphology-based phylogeny resolves euthycarcinoids as stem-group Mandibulata, sister to the Myriapoda and Crustacea plus Hexapoda.

Abdomen↗
PubMed2005

Dental microwear texture analysis shows within-species diet variability in fossil hominins.

Reconstructing the diets of extinct hominins is essential to understanding the paleobiology and evolutionary history of our lineage. Dental microwear, the study of microscopic tooth-wear resulting from use, provides direct evidence of what an individual ate in the past. Unfortunately, established methods of studying microwear are plagued with low repeatability and high observer error. Here we apply an objective, repeatable approach for studying three-dimensional microwear surface texture to extinct South African hominins. Scanning confocal microscopy together with scale-sensitive fractal analysis are used to characterize the complexity and anisotropy of microwear. Results for living primates show that this approach can distinguish among diets characterized by different fracture properties. When applied to hominins, microwear texture analysis indicates that Australopithecus africanus microwear is more anisotropic, but also more variable in anisotropy than Paranthropus robustus. This latter species has more complex microwear textures, but is also more variable in complexity than A. africanus. This suggests that A. africanus ate more tough foods and P. robustus consumed more hard and brittle items, but that both had variable and overlapping diets.

Animals↗