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Laelaps
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- March 21, 2011
- 02:25 PM
- 877 views
Repost: The Pelican’s Beak – Success and Evolutionary Stasis
I am a relatively infrequent airline traveler, and so packing for distant assignments and trips always presents me with an organizational challenge. Clothes, equipment, and supplies must be tracked down and stuffed into my cheap luggage, with frequent checks of the TSA website to ensure that I can unpack and repack my carry-ons with a [...]... Read more »
Louchart, A., Tourment, N., & Carrier, J. (2010) The earliest known pelican reveals 30 million years of evolutionary stasis in beak morphology. Journal of Ornithology. DOI: 10.1007/s10336-010-0537-5
- March 17, 2011
- 04:41 PM
- 925 views
Doing the Haplomastodon Breakdown
African elephants are sturdy beasts. They don’t break down easily. After death, elephant bodies become temporary islands of intense activity – providing nourishment to scavengers from hyenas to beetles – and the same was true of prehistoric elephants.
At Águas de Araxá, Brazil, a resort hotel sits on top of an ancient elephant graveyard. Construction workers [...]... Read more »
ARROYOCABRALES, J., POLACO, O., LAURITO, C., JOHNSON, E., TERESAALBERDI, M., & VALERIOZAMORA, A. (2007) The proboscideans (Mammalia) from Mesoamerica. Quaternary International, 17-23. DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2006.12.017
Cozzuol, M., Mothé, D., & Avilla, L. (2011) A critical appraisal of the phylogenetic proposals for the South American Gomphotheriidae (Proboscidea: Mammalia). Quaternary International. DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2011.01.038
Dominato, V., Mothé, D., da Silva, R., & Avilla, L. (2011) Evidence of scavenging on remains of the gomphothere Haplomastodon waringi (Proboscidea: Mammalia) from the Pleistocene of Brazil: Taphonomic and paleoecological remarks. Journal of South American Earth Sciences. DOI: 10.1016/j.jsames.2011.01.002
FERRETTI, M.P. (2010) Anatomy of Haplomastodon chimborazi (Mammalia, Proboscidea) from the late Pleistocene of Ecuador and its bearing on the phylogeny and systematics of South American gomphotheres. Geodiversitas, 32(4), 663-721. info:/
FICCARELLI, G., BORSELLI, V., HERRERA, G., MORENOESPINOSA, M., & TORRE, D. (1995) Taxonomic remarks on the South American Mastodons referred to Haplomastodon and Cuvieronius. Geobios, 28(6), 745-756. DOI: 10.1016/S0016-6995(95)80071-9
Mothé, D., Avilla, L., & Winck, G. (2010) Population structure of the gomphothere Stegomastodon waringi (Mammalia: Proboscidea: Gomphotheriidae) from the Pleistocene of Brazil. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 82(4), 983-996. DOI: 10.1590/S0001-37652010005000001
- March 14, 2011
- 08:39 PM
- 1,038 views
The Lost Cowbird of Térapa
“One of the penalties of an ecological education,” the conservationist Aldo Leopold once wrote, “is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” This is true for the students of prehistory as much as ecologists. Nature has never been in a static balance – change is the overwhelming theme – and the scars of [...]... Read more »
Oswald, J., & Steadman, D. (2011) Late pleistocene passerine birds from Sonora, Mexico. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 301(1-4), 56-63. DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2010.12.020
- March 10, 2011
- 07:22 PM
- 1,277 views
Maned Wolf Pee Demystified
Asking weird questions is an essential part of being a science writer. The sort of stuff that stops dinner conversations cold or makes listeners respond “You really are a nerd, aren’t you?” It’s almost hopeless trying to defend oneself in these situations: “What? Who hasn’t wondered about what happened in the digestive system of Tyrannosaurus?”
The [...]... Read more »
Childs-Sanford, S. (2005) THE CAPTIVE MANED WOLF (Chrysocyon brachyurus): NUTRITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS WITH EMPHASIS ON MANAGEMENT OF CYSTINURIA. Master's Thesis: University of Maryland, College Park, 1-163. info:/
- March 9, 2011
- 09:43 PM
- 1,099 views
Unraveling the Nature of the Whorl-Toothed Shark
Reconstructing the anatomy of prehistoric sharks isn’t easy. With few exceptions – an exquisitely-preserved body fossil here, some calcified bits of skeleton there – teeth make up the majority of the shark fossil record. When those teeth come from a relatively recent species with close living relatives, it is not difficult to imagine what the [...]... Read more »
Eastman, C. (1900) Karpinsky's Genus Helicoprion. The American Naturalist, 34(403), 579. DOI: 10.1086/277706
Lebedev, O. (2009) A new specimen of Karpinsky, 1899 from Kazakhstanian Cisurals and a new reconstruction of its tooth whorl position and function . Acta Zoologica, 171-182. DOI: 10.1111/j.1463-6395.2008.00353.x
Mutter, R.J. and Neuman, A. (2008) Jaws and dentition in an Early Triassic, 3-dimensionally preserved eugeneodontid skull (Chondrichthyes). Acta Geologica Polonica, 58(2), 223-227. info:/
- March 7, 2011
- 07:46 PM
- 1,154 views
The Hyena Who Saw the Canyon
“Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?” This question – the title of a review published in last week’s Nature – immediately sparked a flurry of news reports about an impending ecological catastrophe on a scale not seen in 65 million years. We are not witnessing a die-off as severe as any of the [...]... Read more »
M. Antón, A. Turner, M. J. Salesa, J. Morales. (2007) A complete skull of Chasmaporthetes lunensis (Carnivora, Hyaenidae) from the Spanish Pliocene site of La Puebla de Valverde (Teruel). Estudios Geológicos, 62(1), 375-388. info:/
Barnosky, A., Matzke, N., Tomiya, S., Wogan, G., Swartz, B., Quental, T., Marshall, C., McGuire, J., Lindsey, E., Maguire, K.... (2011) Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?. Nature, 471(7336), 51-57. DOI: 10.1038/nature09678
Berta, A. (1981) The Plio-Pleistocene hyaena Chasmaporthetes ossifragus from Florida. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 1(3), 341-356. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.1981.10011905
Cooper, S., Holekamp, K., & Smale, L. (1999) A seasonal feast: long-term analysis of feeding behaviour in the spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta). African Journal of Ecology, 37(2), 149-160. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-2028.1999.00161.x
Ferretti, M. (2007) Evolution of bone-cracking adaptations in hyaenids (Mammalia, Carnivora). Swiss Journal of Geosciences, 100(1), 41-52. DOI: 10.1007/s00015-007-1212-6
Kurten, B., & Werdelin, L. (1988) A review of the genus Chasmaporthetes Hay, 1921 (Carnivora, Hyaenidae). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 8(1), 46-66. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.1988.10011683
Tseng, Z., Antón, M., & Salesa, M. (2011) The evolution of the bone-cracking model in carnivorans: cranial functional morphology of the Plio-Pleistocene cursorial hyaenid Chasmaporthetes lunensis (Mammalia: Carnivora). Paleobiology, 37(1), 140-156. DOI: 10.1666/09045.1
TURNER, A., ANTON, M., & WERDELIN, L. (2008) Taxonomy and evolutionary patterns in the fossil Hyaenidae of Europe. Geobios, 41(5), 677-687. DOI: 10.1016/j.geobios.2008.01.001
WERDELIN, L., TURNER, A., & SOLOUNIAS, N. (1994) Studies of fossil hyaenids: the genera Hyaenictis Gaudry and Chasmaporthetes Hay, with a reconsideration of the Hyaenidae of Langebaanweg, South Africa. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 111(3), 197-217. DOI: 10.1111/j.1096-3642.1994.tb01483.x
- March 3, 2011
- 09:07 AM
- 987 views
Ammonoids Trapped Parasites in Pearls
Everybody knows how oysters make pearls – a bit of sand or grit slips through the protective barrier of their outer shell, irritating the mollusk’s body, and the invertebrate encircles the invader with shell material. As it turns out, ammonoids — the extinct, coil-shelled cousins of modern squid and nautilus — made [...]... Read more »
De Baets, K.; Klug, C.; Korn, D. (2010) Devonian pearls and ammonoid-endoparasite co-evolution. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. DOI: 10.4202/app.2010.0044
- February 25, 2011
- 12:49 AM
- 954 views
In the Web of the Velvet Worm
Author’s Note: This post is a bit of synchroblogging with Scicurious. Check out Neurotic Physiology for her excellent post on the same study.
I used to think that velvet worms were kind of cute. Living members of a very old lineage of multi-legged invertebrates – the Onychophora, which stretches back over 505 million years ago to [...]... Read more »
Dias, S., & Lo-Man-Hung, N. (2009) First record of an onychophoran (Onychophora, Peripatidae) feeding on a theraphosid spider (Araneae, Theraphosidae). Journal of Arachnology, 37(1), 116-117. DOI: 10.1636/ST08-20.1
Haritos, V., Niranjane, A., Weisman, S., Trueman, H., Sriskantha, A., & Sutherland, T. (2010) Harnessing disorder: onychophorans use highly unstructured proteins, not silks, for prey capture. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1698), 3255-3263. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0604
- February 24, 2011
- 05:36 PM
- 925 views
Synophalos and the Cambrian Conga Lines
Compared to other creatures of the Cambrian seas, Synophalos xynos seems rather plain. It was not a living pincushion like Wiwaxia, its body did not resemble a walking cactus like Diania, and it wasn’t a five-eyed, schnozzle-faced enigma like Opabinia. Next to these fantastic forms, Synophalos looks like little more than a peeled shrimp, but [...]... Read more »
Hou, X., Siveter, D., Aldridge, R., & Siveter, D. (2008) Collective Behavior in an Early Cambrian Arthropod. Science, 322(5899), 224-224. DOI: 10.1126/science.1162794
XIAN-GUANG, H., SIVETER, D., ALDRIDGE, R., & SIVETER, D. (2009) A NEW ARTHROPOD IN CHAIN-LIKE ASSOCIATIONS FROM THE CHENGJIANG LAGERSTÄTTE (LOWER CAMBRIAN), YUNNAN, CHINA. Palaeontology, 52(4), 951-961. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2009.00889.x
ANDRZEJ RADWAŃSKI, ADRIAN KIN, AND URSZULA RADWAŃSKA. (2009) Queues of blind phacopid trilobites Trimerocephalus: A case of frozen behaviour of Early Famennian age from the Holy Cross Mountains, Central Poland. Acta Geologica Polonica, 59(4), 459-481. info:/
- February 22, 2011
- 12:41 PM
- 1,004 views
Ancestor Worship
By the close of 2002, there were at least three contenders for the title of “earliest known human.” There was the 7 million year old Sahelanthropus tchadensis from the Djurab Desert, the 6 million year old Orrorin tugenensis from Kenya, and the 5.6 million year old Ardipithecus kadabba from northeastern Ethiopia’s Afar region. Though very [...]... Read more »
Brunet, M., Guy, F., Pilbeam, D., Mackaye, H., Likius, A., Ahounta, D., Beauvilain, A., Blondel, C., Bocherens, H., Boisserie, J.... (2002) A new hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad, Central Africa. Nature, 418(6894), 145-151. DOI: 10.1038/nature00879
FROEHLICH, D. (2002) Quo vadis eohippus? The systematics and taxonomy of the early Eocene equids (Perissodactyla). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 134(2), 141-256. DOI: 10.1046/j.1096-3642.2002.00005.x
Haile-Selassie, Y. (2001) Late Miocene hominids from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature, 412(6843), 178-181. DOI: 10.1038/35084063
Harrison, T. (2010) Apes Among the Tangled Branches of Human Origins. Science, 327(5965), 532-534. DOI: 10.1126/science.1184703
McBrearty, S., & Jablonski, N. (2005) First fossil chimpanzee. Nature, 437(7055), 105-108. DOI: 10.1038/nature04008
Senut, B. (2001) First hominid from the Miocene (Lukeino Formation, Kenya)Premier hominidé du Miocène (formation de Lukeino, Kenya). Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences - Series IIA - Earth and Planetary Science, 332(2), 137-144. DOI: 10.1016/S1251-8050(01)01529-4
White, T., Asfaw, B., Beyene, Y., Haile-Selassie, Y., Lovejoy, C., Suwa, G., & WoldeGabriel, G. (2009) Ardipithecus ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids. Science, 326(5949), 64-64. DOI: 10.1126/science.1175802
Wolpoff, M., Senut, B., Pickford, M., & Hawks, J. (2002) Palaeoanthropology (communication arising): Sahelanthropus or 'Sahelpithecus'?. Nature, 419(6907), 581-582. DOI: 10.1038/419581a
Wood, B., & Harrison, T. (2011) The evolutionary context of the first hominins. Nature, 470(7334), 347-352. DOI: 10.1038/nature09709
- February 16, 2011
- 11:44 AM
- 936 views
Demythologizing Arctotherium, the Biggest Bear Ever
Quite a few years back, so long ago that I can’t really remember much more than the fact that I once visited it, my parents took me to Space Farms Zoo and Museum. Tucked away in northern New Jersey, the roadside attraction is not so much a zoo or a museum as a throwback to [...]... Read more »
FIGUEIRIDO, B., & SOIBELZON, L. (2009) Inferring palaeoecology in extinct tremarctine bears (Carnivora, Ursidae) using geometric morphometrics. Lethaia, 43(2), 209-222. DOI: 10.1111/j.1502-3931.2009.00184.x
Soibelzon, L., Pomi, L., Tonni, E., Rodriguez, S., & Dondas, A. (2009) First report of a South American short-faced bears' den (Arctotherium angustidens): palaeobiological and palaeoecological implications. Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, 33(3), 211-222. DOI: 10.1080/03115510902844418
Soibelzon, L., & Schubert, B. (2011) The Largest Known Bear, Arctotherium angustidens, from the Early Pleistocene Pampean Region of Argentina: With a Discussion of Size and Diet Trends in Bears. Journal of Paleontology, 85(1), 69-75. DOI: 10.1666/10-037.1
- February 14, 2011
- 03:52 PM
- 1,214 views
Repost – Q: How do you sex a Smilodon? A: Very carefully
An animal of such habits [as Smilodon] might fulfill the legendary requirements of the ‘King of Beasts’ more nearly than does the lion. It would be bold and fearless of the most powerful, and it might well be thought to exercise a ‘magnanimous’ forbearance toward the small and weak ones, since they [...]... Read more »
Meachen-Samuels, J., & Binder, W. (2009) Sexual dimorphism and ontogenetic growth in the American lion and sabertoothed cat from Rancho La Brea. Journal of Zoology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2009.00659.x
- February 12, 2011
- 05:05 PM
- 669 views
Terror Birds Ain’t What They Used to Be – A Titanis Take-Down
You know a novel is going to be bad when the main endorsement on the jacket comes from the movie producer who is trying to turn the mass of pulp into a film. It’s the literary equivalent of saying “Well, my mom thinks I’m handsome.” All the same, I just couldn’t resist picking up James [...]... Read more »
Alvarenga, H., & Höfling, E. (2003) Systematic revision of the Phorusrhacidae (Aves: Ralliformes). Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia (São Paulo), 43(4). DOI: 10.1590/S0031-10492003000400001
Alvarenga, H., Jones, W., & Rinderknecht, A. (2010) The youngest record of phorusrhacid birds (Aves, Phorusrhacidae) from the late Pleistocene of Uruguay. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen, 256(2), 229-234. DOI: 10.1127/0077-7749/2010/0052
Baskin, J. (1995) The giant flightless bird Titanis walleri (Aves: Phorusrhacidae) from the Pleistocene coastal plain of south Texas. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 15(4), 842-844. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.1995.10011266
BERTELLI, S., CHIAPPE, L., & TAMBUSSI, C. (2007) A NEW PHORUSRHACID (AVES: CARIAMAE) FROM THE MIDDLE MIOCENE OF PATAGONIA, ARGENTINA. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 27(2), 409-419. DOI: 10.1671/0272-4634(2007)27[409:ANPACF]2.0.CO;2
Blanco, R., & Jones, W. (2005) Terror birds on the run: a mechanical model to estimate its maximum running speed. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1574), 1769-1773. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2005.3133
Pierce Brodkorb. (1963) A Giant Flightless Bird from the Pleistocene of Florida. The AUk, 80(2), 111-115. info:/
Degrange, F., Tambussi, C., Moreno, K., Witmer, L., & Wroe, S. (2010) Mechanical Analysis of Feeding Behavior in the Extinct “Terror Bird” Andalgalornis steulleti (Gruiformes: Phorusrhacidae). PLoS ONE, 5(8). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011856
MacFadden, B., Labs-Hochstein, J., Hulbert, R., & Baskin, J. (2007) Revised age of the late Neogene terror bird (Titanis) in North America during the Great American Interchange. Geology, 35(2), 123. DOI: 10.1130/G23186A.1
- February 10, 2011
- 12:26 PM
- 644 views
The Dodo is Dead, Long Live the Dodo!
The Dodo, Didus, is a bird that inhabits some of the islands of the East Indies. Its history is little known; but if the representation of it be at all just, this is the ugliest and most disgusting of birds, resembling in its appearance one of those bloated and unwieldy persons who by a long [...]... Read more »
Angst, D., Buffetaut, E., & Abourachid, A. (2011) The end of the fat dodo? A new mass estimate for Raphus cucullatus. Naturwissenschaften. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-010-0759-7
DEN HENGST, J. (2009) The dodo and scientific fantasies: durable myths of a tough bird. Archives of Natural History, 36(1), 136-145. DOI: 10.3366/E0260954108000697
Hume, J. (2006) The history of the Dodo Raphus cucullatus and the penguin of Mauritius. Historical Biology, 18(2), 65-89. DOI: 10.1080/08912960600639400
Hume, Julian; Datta, Ann; Martill, David M. (2006) Unpublished drawings of the Dodo Raphus cucullatus and notes on Dodo skin relics. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club, 126(A). info:/
Hume, J., Cheke, A., & McOran-Campbell, A. (2009) How Owen 'stole' the Dodo: academic rivalry and disputed rights to a newly-discovered subfossil deposit in nineteenth century Mauritius. Historical Biology, 21(1), 33-49. DOI: 10.1080/08912960903101868
Nicholls, H. (2006) Ornithology: Digging for dodo. Nature, 443(7108), 138-140. DOI: 10.1038/443138a
RIJSDIJK, K., HUME, J., BUNNIK, F., FLORENS, F., BAIDER, C., SHAPIRO, B., VANDERPLICHT, J., JANOO, A., GRIFFITHS, O., & VANDENHOEKOSTENDE, L. (2009) Mid-Holocene vertebrate bone Concentration-Lagerstätte on oceanic island Mauritius provides a window into the ecosystem of the dodo (Raphus cucullatus). Quaternary Science Reviews, 28(1-2), 14-24. DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2008.09.018
Roberts, D., & Solow, A. (2003) Flightless birds: When did the dodo become extinct?. Nature, 426(6964), 245-245. DOI: 10.1038/426245a
Shapiro, B. (2002) Flight of the Dodo. Science, 295(5560), 1683-1683. DOI: 10.1126/science.295.5560.1683
Turvey, S., & Cheke, A. (2008) Dead as a dodo: the fortuitous rise to fame of an extinction icon. Historical Biology, 20(2), 149-163. DOI: 10.1080/08912960802376199
- February 2, 2011
- 02:03 PM
- 1,009 views
Extra Armor Gave Glyptodon an Edge
Killing a glyptodont was no easy task. Prehistoric, bad-ass cousins of modern armadillos, these large mammals were protected by bony shielding on almost every part of their body. Some, such as Hoplophorus, even had modified tail clubs tipped with mace-like arrangements of spikes. Saber-toothed cats like Smilodon were surely formidable predators, but even they would [...]... Read more »
Zurita, A., Soibelzon, L., Soibelzon, E., Gasparini, G., Cenizo, M., & Arzani, H. (2010) Accessory protection structures in Glyptodon Owen (Xenarthra, Cingulata, Glyptodontidae). Annales de Paléontologie, 96(1), 1-11. DOI: 10.1016/j.annpal.2010.01.001
Gillette, D., and Ray, Clayton. (1981) Glyptodonts of North America. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology, 1-255. info:/
Blanco, R., Jones, W., & Rinderknecht, A. (2009) The sweet spot of a biological hammer: the centre of percussion of glyptodont (Mammalia: Xenarthra) tail clubs. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 276(1675), 3971-3978. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1144
- January 31, 2011
- 09:31 PM
- 900 views
Bears and Bamboo: The fossil record of giant pandas
Where do giant pandas come from? Of course, the proximal answer involves a male and female panda – and maybe some panda porn, if life in captivity dampens the mood – but I’m not talking about that. What I’m wondering about is the evolutionary origin of these bamboo-eating bears.
Until recently, there was little to be [...]... Read more »
Dong, W. (2008) Virtual cranial endocast of the oldest giant panda (Ailuropoda microta) reveals great similarity to that of its extant relative. Naturwissenschaften, 95(11), 1079-1083. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-008-0419-3
Figueirido, B., Palmqvist, P., Pérez-Claros, J., & Dong, W. (2010) Cranial shape transformation in the evolution of the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). Naturwissenschaften, 98(2), 107-116. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-010-0748-x
Jin, C., Ciochon, R., Dong, W., Hunt, R., Liu, J., Jaeger, M., & Zhu, Q. (2007) The first skull of the earliest giant panda. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(26), 10932-10937. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0704198104
Salesa, M. (2006) Evidence of a false thumb in a fossil carnivore clarifies the evolution of pandas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(2), 379-382. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0504899102
- January 27, 2011
- 08:00 PM
- 667 views
Tully’s Mystery Monster
To say that paleontologists can’t make heads or tails of the Tully Monster would be untrue. The claw-tipped proboscis on the front end and the arrow-shaped rear fins at the posterior end can be easily identified in complete specimens. Beyond that, though, this 300 million year old invertebrate remains one of the most vexing fossil [...]... Read more »
Richardson, E. (1966) Wormlike Fossil from the Pennsylvanian of Illinois. Science, 151(3706), 75-76. DOI: 10.1126/science.151.3706.75-a
Chen, J., Huang, D., & Bottjer, D. (2005) An Early Cambrian problematic fossil: Vetustovermis and its possible affinities. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1576), 2003-2007. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2005.3159
Ralph Gordon Johnson, Eugene S. Richardson. (1969) The Morphology and Affinities of Tullimonstrum. Fieldiana: Geology, 12(8), 119-149. info:/
- January 26, 2011
- 09:14 PM
- 556 views
Jumbo Shrimps: Why Mega-Mammals Still Looked Puny Next to the Biggest Dinosaurs
Imagine a rhinoceros. For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s a white rhinoceros. Don’t worry if you can’t envision every little anatomical flourish in your mind. We’re going to modify this beast a bit.
First thing’s first – lose the horn. We have no use for it. Next, lengthen the neck a bit. Not too [...]... Read more »
Smith, F., Boyer, A., Brown, J., Costa, D., Dayan, T., Ernest, S., Evans, A., Fortelius, M., Gittleman, J., Hamilton, M.... (2010) The Evolution of Maximum Body Size of Terrestrial Mammals. Science, 330(6008), 1216-1219. DOI: 10.1126/science.1194830
Burness, G. (2001) Dinosaurs, dragons, and dwarfs: The evolution of maximal body size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(25), 14518-14523. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.251548698
Wedel, M. (2009) Evidence for bird-like air sacs in saurischian dinosaurs. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Ecological Genetics and Physiology, 311A(8), 611-628. DOI: 10.1002/jez.513
- January 20, 2011
- 08:32 PM
- 672 views
Toumai and the Sabercats
“They fight! And bite! They fight and bite and fight! Fight fight fight! Bite bite bite!”
That’s the theme from “The Itchy and Scratchy Show” – the ultra-violent riff on Tom and Jerry regularly featured on The Simpsons - but it could be easily applied to almost any documentary about prehistoric animals that you care to [...]... Read more »
de Bonis, L., Peigné, S., Taisso Mackaye, H., Likius, A., Vignaud, P., & Brunet, M. (2010) New sabre-toothed cats in the Late Miocene of Toros Menalla (Chad). Comptes Rendus Palevol, 9(5), 221-227. DOI: 10.1016/j.crpv.2010.07.018
Fur, S., Fara, E., Mackaye, H., Vignaud, P., & Brunet, M. (2008) The mammal assemblage of the hominid site TM266 (Late Miocene, Chad Basin): ecological structure and paleoenvironmental implications. Naturwissenschaften, 96(5), 565-574. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-008-0504-7
Wolpoff, M., Senut, B., Pickford, M., & Hawks, J. (2002) Palaeoanthropology (communication arising): Sahelanthropus or 'Sahelpithecus'?. Nature, 419(6907), 581-582. DOI: 10.1038/419581a
BONIS, L., PEIGNE, S., LIKIUS, A., MACKAYE, H., VIGNAUD, P., & BRUNET, M. (2005) Hyaenictitherium minimum, a new ictithere (Mammalia, Carnivora, Hyaenidae) from the Late Miocene of Toros-Menalla, Chad. Comptes Rendus Palevol, 4(8), 671-679. DOI: 10.1016/j.crpv.2005.09.020
PEIGNE, S., DEBONIS, L., LIKIUS, A., MACKAYE, H., VIGNAUD, P., & BRUNET, M. (2005) A new machairodontine (Carnivora, Felidae) from the Late Miocene hominid locality of TM 266, Toros-Menalla, Chad. Comptes Rendus Palevol, 4(3), 243-253. DOI: 10.1016/j.crpv.2004.10.002
- January 12, 2011
- 08:15 AM
- 813 views
Repost: Hurdia – Another cool Cambrian critter
Author’s Note: A post currently in preparation reminded me of Hurdia, a bizarre Cambrian creature that was initially divvied up into parts attributed various invertebrate groups and has only recently been united into a single creature allied with Anomalocaris. Check back later today for a tale about the debated affinities of a possibly related creature, [...]... Read more »
Daley, A., Budd, G., Caron, J., Edgecombe, G., & Collins, D. (2009) The Burgess Shale Anomalocaridid Hurdia and Its Significance for Early Euarthropod Evolution. Science, 323(5921), 1597-1600. DOI: 10.1126/science.1169514
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