by Russell Garwood *1 pa·lae·on·tol·o·gy / pa·le·on·tol·o·gy noun /ˌpælɪɒnˈtɒlədʒi/ or /ˌpeɪlɪɒnˈtɒlədʒi/ — The scientific study of prehistoric life. Introduction Palaeontology. If you’re reading this, it is likely that you’ve already encountered this particular corner of the scientific world, and know what it involves. If not, welcome: I think palaeontology is awesome and I hope that […]
by Joseph N. Keating*1 Introduction: The Heterostraci (which means ‘different shield’) make up an extinct group of jawless fish that lived during the early to middle Palaeozoic era, approximately 440 million to 359 million years ago. They were exceptionally diverse, with over 300 species currently described from marine and freshwater sediments of North America, Europe and […]
By Peter D. Heintzman*1 Introduction: Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short, is the magical molecule that encodes instructions on how to build organisms, and has been doing so successfully for at least the past 2.5 billion years. Although its function has remained constant throughout this time, the instructions themselves have been slowly modified and upgraded […]
by Holly M. Dunsworth Humans would not have evolved if the ancestors of the African great apes had not. The ape fossil record begins 23 million years ago with the earliest putative apes, including Morotopithecus and Proconsul (Figure 1), from sites in East Africa, followed by many others throughout Africa, Europe and Asia. Although this […]
by Chloe Marquart1 When I tell the average stranger that I’m a palaeontologist, the first question that I’m inevitably asked is: “Like Ross from Friends?” The second is: “Have you named any dinosaurs?” The naming of fossils is actually a very small part of the work that palaeontologists do, but it often garners the most attention […]
by Victoria McCoy*1 Introduction: Have you ever seen a geode — a boring-looking ball-shaped rock that, when split open, reveals a remarkable crystalline interior? For most people, the first reaction to the dazzling crystal interior is to marvel at its beauty. But for some — and perhaps you fall into this group, since you are reading […]
By Jo Wolfe*1 Introduction: Development, the process by which a single egg cell transforms into a complex adult organism, has fascinated biologists for more than 200 years. In the mid-nineteenth century, before and during the time when Charles Darwin was uncovering the principles of natural selection, a number of biologists who wondered what caused evolutionary […]
by Mark Bell*1 Introduction: Trilobites make up one of the most fascinating and diverse groups in the fossil record. Over the course of their long history — which dates back to near the beginning of the Cambrian period, around 520 million years ago — they have inhabited a wide range of marine environments, from reefs to […]
by Simon Darroch*1 Introduction: Sitting in the sweltering heat of southern Japan, I’m faced with a conundrum. The limestone cliff in front of me preserves the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods, a point in time around 250 million years ago that witnessed the greatest mass extinction of the Phanerozoic eon. I’m collecting rock […]
by Christine Janis1 Ladies and gentlemen, I give you tree-kangaroos. These wonderful animals can, in myriad ways, demonstrate the power of evolutionary biology and geology in explaining the patterns we see in modern ecosystems. Here, I want to show how palaeontologists can piece together multiple lines of evidence to understand the evolutionary relationships of fossil […]