Some recent papers:
Matthew T. Carrano, Mark A. Loewen and Serjoscha W. Evers (2018)
Comment (Case 3506) â Conservation of Allosaurus Marsh, 1877 (Dinosauria, Theropoda): additional data in support of the proposed neotype for its type species Allosaurus fragilis Marsh, 1877.
The Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 75():59-64. 2018Â
(Preview indicates they support the designation of the neotype. As part of the Smithsonian's renovation of its dinosaur exhibit, the proposed Allosaurus neotype skull has been removed and restudied, with a new description to be published, and a new reconstruction that corrects problems with original mount of the originally disarticulated skull elements.)
Also in same issue:
Case 3757: Pterodactylus crassipes Meyer, 1857 (currently Ostromia crassipes; Reptilia: Saurischia): proposed reinstatement. Vahe D. Dermirjian. ( Acknowledgement of receipt published in BZN 75: 2; Case not published). Following correspondence with the author, the Case is now closed.
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Non-dino:
Gerald Mayr (2018)
A survey of casques, frontal humps, and other extravagant bony cranial protuberances in birds.
Zoomorphology (advance online publication)
The occurrence of casques, frontal humps, and other bony cranial protuberances in birds is reviewed. Several previously overlooked examples are reported and casques of some rare taxa are for the first time figured. Bony cranial protuberances are most widespread among galloanserine birds, which is particularly true for helmet-like casques on top of the skull. In the species-rich clade Neoaves, by contrast, bony protuberances rarely occur on top of the skull and are mainly restricted to the beak. Similar structures have a different ontogenetic origin, with the casque of cassowaries being mainly formed by the mesethmoid and that of the Helmeted Guineafowl (Numida meleagris) deriving from the frontal bones. The pneumatic frontal humps of anseriform birds are formed through inflation of diverticula of the antorbital and/or fronto-ethmoidal sinus, and air sac diverticula are likely to be involved in the formation of other casques. In some Galloanseres, bony cranial protuberances are associated with integumentary structures that have a signaling function, but such correlations do not exist for other taxa, for which a physiological, acoustic or sensory function of the protuberances has to be considered. Casques also occur in pterosaurs and non-avian dinosaurs, but most comparisons between these extinct animals and birds were confined to the casques of cassowaries. The full spectrum of bony cranial outgrowths in birds has not yet been considered and the present survey may serve as a basis for future comparisons. Prominent casques on top of the skull are more likely to evolve in terrestrial or aquatic birds, in which the head is particularly exposed and plays a role in intraspecific signaling, but their absence in most neoavian taxa is noteworthy and requires future studies to address possible ontogenetic, ecological, or functional constraints on their formation.
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Free pdf:
Adam Mann (2018)
Life after the asteroid apocalypse
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (advance online publication)
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Christopher M. Lowery, Timothy J. Bralower, Jeremy D. Owens, Francisco J. RodrÃguez-Tovar, Heather Jones, Jan Smit, Michael T. Whalen, Phillipe Claeys, Kenneth Farley, Sean P. S. Gulick, Joanna V. Morgan, Sophie Green, Elise Chenot, Gail L. Christeson, Charles S. Cockell, Marco J. L. Coolen, Ludovic FerriÃre, Catalina Gebhardt, Kazuhisa Goto, David A. Kring, Johanna Lofi, RubÃn Ocampo-Torres, Ligia Perez-Cruz, Annemarie E. Pickersgill, Michael H. Poelchau, Auriol S. P. Rae, Cornelia Rasmussen, Mario Rebolledo-Vieyra, Ulrich Riller, Honami Sato, Sonia M. Tikoo, Naotaka Tomioka, Jaime Urrutia-Fucugauchi, Johan Vellekoop, Axel Wittmann, Long Xiao, Kosei E. Yamaguchi & William Zylberman (2018)
Rapid recovery of life at ground zero of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction
Nature (advance online publication)
The Cretaceous/Palaeogene mass extinction eradicated 76% of species on Earth. It was caused by the impact of an asteroid on the YucatÃn carbonate platform in the southern Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago, forming the Chicxulub impact crater. After the mass extinction, the recovery of the global marine ecosystemâmeasured as primary productivityâwas geographically heterogeneous; export production in the Gulf of Mexico and North Atlanticâwestern Tethys was slower than in most other regions, taking 300 thousand years (kyr) to return to levels similar to those of the Late Cretaceous period. Delayed recovery of marine productivity closer to the crater implies an impact-related environmental control, such as toxic metal poisoning, on recovery times. If no such geographic pattern exists, the best explanation for the observed heterogeneity is a combination of ecological factorsâtrophic interactions, species incumbency and competitive exclusion by opportunistsâand 'chance'. The question of whether the post-impact recovery of marine productivity was delayed closer to the crater has a bearing on the predictability of future patterns of recovery in anthropogenically perturbed ecosystems. If there is a relationship between the distance from the impact and the recovery of marine productivity, we would expect recovery rates to be slowest in the crater itself. Here we present a record of foraminifera, calcareous nannoplankton, trace fossils and elemental abundance data from within the Chicxulub crater, dated to approximately the first 200 kyr of the Palaeocene. We show that life reappeared in the basin just years after the impact and a high-productivity ecosystem was established within 30 kyr, which indicates that proximity to the impact did not delay recovery and that there was therefore no impact-related environmental control on recovery. Ecological processes probably controlled the recovery of productivity after the Cretaceous/Palaeogene mass extinction and are therefore likely to be important for the response of the ocean ecosystem to other rapid extinction events.
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Jean Goedert, Christophe LÃcuyer, Romain Amiot, Florent Arnaud-Godet, Xu Wang, Linlin Cui, Gilles Cuny, Guillaume Douay, FranÃois Fourel, GÃrard Panczer, Laurent Simon, J.-SÃbastien Steyer & Min Zhu (2018)
Euryhaline ecology of early tetrapods revealed by stable isotopes.
Nature (advance online publication)
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The fish-to-tetrapod transitionâfollowed later by terrestrializationârepresented a major step in vertebrate evolution that gave rise to a successful clade that today contains more than 30,000 tetrapod species. The early tetrapod Ichthyostega was discovered in 1929 in the Devonian Old Red Sandstone sediments of East Greenland (dated to approximately 365 million years ago). Since then, our understanding of the fish-to-tetrapod transition has increased considerably, owing to the discovery of additional Devonian taxa that represent early tetrapods or groups evolutionarily close to them. However, the aquatic environment of early tetrapods and the vertebrate fauna associated with them has remained elusive and highly debated. Here we use a multi-stable isotope approach (Î13C, Î18O and Î34S) to show that some Devonian vertebrates, including early tetrapods, were euryhaline and inhabited transitional aquatic environments subject to high-magnitude, rapid changes in salinity, such as estuaries or deltas. Euryhalinity may have predisposed the early tetrapod clade to be able to survive Late Devonian biotic crises and then successfully colonize terrestrial environments.
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