Published in Swiss journal of palaeontology
Coelacanths form a clade of sarcopterygian fish represented today by a single genus, Latimeria. The fossil record of the group, which dates back to the Early Devonian, is sparse. In Switzerland, only Triassic sites in the east and southeast of the country have yielded fossils of coelacanths. Here, we describe and study the very first coelacanth of ...
The water-to-land transition represents a key stage in the evolution of tetrapod vertebrates. The mechanical constraints inherent to this new environment led amniotes to develop novel locomotor strategies that granted them access to various ecological niches, thus contributing to the evolutionary success of the clade. Today, amniotes show great loc...
Organisms that colonize wood are subject to a taphonomic tragedy—the richer and more diverse they become, the greater the deterioration of the host wood and the less likely such communities are to be fossilized. Moreover, palaeobotanical studies of fossil wood usually focus on the plant tissue, neglecting the evidence of parasitic, saproxylic, and ...
Tubuliferan Thysanoptera are extremely uncommon in the fossil record, thus little is our knowledge of their geological history. Here, we describe the first apterous Phlaeothripidae, and the eighth species of Tubulifera, for the entire Mesozoic. It corresponds to a small female preserved in Upper Albian amber of Peñacerrada II outcrop (Álava amber) ...
Varicapitatus sinuolatus gen. et sp. nov. is described from the Yixian Formation of Northeastern China. Based on the new specimens, this study discusses the morphological characteristics and taxonomic position of Pachymeridiidae: Pachymeridiidae belongs to Pentatomomorpha and is more closely related to Lygaeoidea. In Heteroptera, the costal fractur...
Published in Frontiers in Earth Science
Most of the significant petroleum- and coal-bearing sedimentary basins in Northeast Asia originated via rifting and thermal subsidence during the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous, followed by basin inversion in the Late Cretaceous. However, the tectonic background governing these basin prototype shifts has not been fully explored. The unconformities ...
The water-to-land transition represents a key event in the evolution of tetrapod vertebrates. The mechanical constraints inherent to this new environment led amniotes to develop novel locomotor strategies that granted them access to new ecological niches, thus contributing to the evolutionary success of the clade. Today, amniotes show great locomot...
Aenigmaraphidophora mouniri gen. et sp. nov., an enigmatic representative of the ensiferan infraorder Tettigoniidea, is described and figured from the Lower Cretaceous of Lebanon, based on a nearly complete male specimen. The new fossil could fit in either in the stem group of the Rhaphidophoridae or in the Tettigoniidae. In either cases, the disco...
Published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
Ptiliidae is a group of distinctly miniaturized staphylinoid beetles with a scarce fossil record. Here, we report a new ptiliid genus and species, Crenossidium slipinskii Li, Newton and Cai gen. et sp. nov., from mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar. Crenossidium can be attributed to the subfamily Nossidiinae based on the hind wing morphology...
Published in BMC Biology
Background In egg-laying amniotes, the developing embryo is tethered to a number of the extraembryonic membranes including the yolk sac and allantois that deliver oxygen and nutrients and remove metabolic waste products throughout embryonic development. Prior to, or soon after hatching, these membranes detach from the animal leaving a temporary or ...
