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Fossil Focus: Oviraptorosauria

Fossil Focus: Oviraptorosauria

Fossil Focus
by Waisum Ma Introduction: Oviraptorosauria is a group of theropod dinosaurs that first appeared around 125 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous period. They evolved into diverse forms before being wiped out 66 million years ago in the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, an event that killed all the non-avian dinosaurs. The first known oviraptorosaurian — called Oviraptor — was unearthed in 1923 by the American Museum of Natural History expedition team in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. It was found near some eggs assumed to be from the dinosaur Protoceratops, which led researchers to infer that Oviraptor stole the eggs of other species — the name means ‘egg thief’. This interpretation was refuted after researchers discovered oviraptorosaurian fossils brooding nests of t...
Fossil Focus: Stepping  through time with tetrapod trace fossils

Fossil Focus: Stepping through time with tetrapod trace fossils

Fossil Focus
by Hannah C. Bird Introduction: Ichnology is the study of trace fossils, the physical evidence for the activities of organisms that lived millions of years ago. Trace fossils depict activities such as walking, resting, feeding and burrowing, which can be represented by tracks ranging from recognizable large footprints to long, grooved trails (Fig. 1). One organism can be responsible for multiple trackways: for example, the extinct invertebrate arthropods called trilobites are known to have produced the burrowing trace Cruziana as well as the resting trace Rusophycus. Figure 1 — Examples of trace fossils preserved in non-marine environments (after Bromley, 1996), including scorpion trackways (1), crustacean burrows (5; Cruziana problematica), arthropod trackways (8, 9), fish swimm...
Patterns In Palaeontology: Digitally Peering Inside Fossil Skulls

Patterns In Palaeontology: Digitally Peering Inside Fossil Skulls

Patterns in Palaeontology
by Charlotte M. Bird 1 Introduction: Imagine you are an avid fossil hunter and have just dug up a skull of an extinct vertebrate. You are the first human ever to see it. Not only is that amazing, but you are also at the start of a journey into discovering how this organism lived: whether it was diurnal (active during the day) or nocturnal, whether it hunted above ground or burrowed, had poor vision or an exceptional sense of smell. Despite the millions of years that may have passed, the growing field of virtual palaeontology provides a new world of analysis techniques that can help palaeontologists to peer inside the skull and uncover some truly fascinating insights. What are digital endocasts? Virtual Palaeontology is the non-destructive study of fossils using digital method...
Patterns in Palaeontology: The Real Jurassic Park

Patterns in Palaeontology: The Real Jurassic Park

Patterns in Palaeontology
by Jack Wilkin*1 Introduction: The Morrison Formation is renowned worldwide as one of the world’s most significant locations for dinosaur fossils. It covers more than 150 million square kilometres, running from Alberta in Canada to New Mexico in the United States, and from Idaho across to Nebraska (Fig. 1). The Morrison dates to the Oxfordian stage of the late Jurassic period, some 155 million to 148 million years ago. It is what is known as a Konzentrat-Lagerstätten, meaning that it has a very high concentration of fossil remains, with extensive bone beds created by flash floods depositing lots of bones in one place. The Morrison provides palaeontologists with remarkable insight into a late Jurassic terrestrial ecosystem. Not only does the formation contain some of the largest din...
Perspectives — Palaeontology in 2018

Perspectives — Palaeontology in 2018

Perspectives
by The Palaeontology [online] editorial board*1 Introduction: At the turn of most years, the some of the editorial board at Palaeontology [online] takes the opportunity to reflect on the past year in palaeontology. Given that we published a wonderful overview of Diploporitans in January, this year we’ve moved our look over our favourite studies from last year to February. Palaeontology and associated disciplines are fast-moving and exciting areas of science — looking back at 2018 lets us highlight just a few of the key developments that really show this. Picking just one article each is difficult, and we have been forced to miss out many of the hundreds of exciting papers published in the past 12 months. Nevertheless, we hope that our choices reflect the breadth and depth of palaeob...
Fossil Focus: Diploporitans

Fossil Focus: Diploporitans

Fossil Focus
by Sarah L. Sheffield*1 Introduction: Echinoderms, a group of marine animals that includes familiar organisms such as sea stars and sea urchins, were much more diverse in the past than they are today. There are five living classes of echinoderms (sea stars, sea urchins, brittle stars, sea cucumbers and crinoids), but more than 20 extinct classes are known only from the fossil record. During the Palaeozoic Era (542 million to 251 million years ago), especially, echinoderms were incredibly diverse and thrived all over the globe (Fig. 1). This was a time of significant environmental change, with the climate ranging from very warm oceans with high sea levels and high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to much colder oceans, with extensive glacial ice. By studying how fossil ...

Stereom

A mesh network of calcium carbonate material that makes up the skeleton of echinoderm organisms.

Carbonate

Sedimentary rocks made of carbonate minerals (for example, calcite, aragonite); these mainly form rocks such as limestone and dolomite.
Patterns in Palaeontology — Deducing the tree of life

Patterns in Palaeontology — Deducing the tree of life

Patterns in Palaeontology
by Russell Garwood*1 Introduction “Increasing knowledge leads to triumphant loss of clarity” — Palaeontologist Alfred Romer Some areas of life and human endeavour have the luxury of certainty. Along these paths of discovery, there are things we can know to be true or false. In others, it is impossible to assess the concept of truth: it can’t be established, or just isn’t a consideration. And between these extremes is a whole mess of important stuff. Palaeontology almost always lies somewhere on this gradation. Researchers studying past life are often juggling multiple layers of uncertainty. We try to balance the need to say something useful — something with meaning, that moves a field and its consensus closer to the truth — with the risk of over-interpreting our data. If the data is t...
Education and Outreach: Cosplay for Science Initiative and the Natural History Museum of Pokémon

Education and Outreach: Cosplay for Science Initiative and the Natural History Museum of Pokémon

Education and Outreach
by Gabriel Santos1 In the world of education, we often hear complaints that people know more about celebrities and fictional characters than about science. Taking a moment to scroll through Twitter or Instagram, it can be easy to agree with such complaints. It can be a constant struggle for educators to find a way to make abstract concepts from science more interesting than ideas from fiction, like the Force or giant robots. But what if there were a way to use people’s fascination with pop culture as a tool for education? What if there were a way to use pop culture to make science relatable and accessible? What if there were a way to use pop culture to make scientists and educators more approachable? That is where the Cosplay for Science Initiative comes in. The Cosplay for Science I...