triskova, katerina packova, gabriela prosvirov, alexander s. kundrata, robin
The click beetles (Elateridae) originated in the Mesozoic and recently form a relatively large family with approximately 10,000 described species worldwide. However, the Mesozoic, and particularly Cretaceous, click beetle fauna remains very poorly known. Here we describe Burmogonus cretaceus gen. et sp. nov. based on a single, relatively well-prese...
Wang, Min Stidham, Thomas A O'Connor, Jingmai K Zhou, Zhonghe
Published in
eLife
The independent movements and flexibility of various parts of the skull, called cranial kinesis, are an evolutionary innovation that is found in living vertebrates only in some squamates and crown birds and is considered to be a major factor underpinning much of the enormous phenotypic and ecological diversity of living birds, the most diverse grou...
Gônet, Jordan
Extant amniotes show remarkable locomotor and postural diversity. Mammals are mainly quadrupedal, but show a variety of limb postures. Within Reptilia, birds are bipedal with parasagittally locomoting, more or less crouched limbs. Most lepidosaurs are quadrupedal with a sprawling posture, but some are able to run on their hind limbs for short dista...
Li, Yan-Da Leschen, Richard A. B. Liu, Zhen-Hua Huang, Di-Ying Cai, Chen-Yang
Published in
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
An enigmatic cucujiform beetle, Alloterocucus atratus Li, Leschen, Liu, and Cai gen. et sp. nov., is reported from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber. The character combination of the new fossil is not completely consistent with any of the known cucujoid or erotyloid families. Based on our phylogenetic analyses, Alloterocucus is assigned to Cucujoidea an...
Skawiński, Tomasz
Published in
PeerJ
Mosasaur remains from Poland are very rare and are restricted mostly to the Campanian and Maastrichtian. The only currently known pre-Campanian records come from the Turonian strata in the Opole area, southwestern Poland. One of them is a single tooth which probably belongs to a yaguarasaurine while the other is an incomplete vertebra, for many yea...
Xiao, Lifang Labandeira, Conrad C Ren, Dong
Published in
Insect science
The Early Cretaceous terrestrial revolution involved global shifts from gymnosperm- to angiosperm-dominated floras. However, responses of insect herbivores to these changes remain unexamined. We evaluated 2 176 highly sampled plant specimens representing 62 species/morphotypes from the 126 Ma Dawangzhangzi plant assemblage of Northeastern China. Ou...
Ferrante, Christophe Menkveld-Gfeller, Ursula Cavin, Lionel
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 ...
Gônet, Jordan
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...
Philippe, Marc McLoughlin, Stephen Strullu-Derrien, Christine Bamford, Marion Kiel, S. Nel, André Thévenard, Frédéric
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 ...
Peñalver, Enrique Nel, André Nel, Patricia
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) ...
