30 April 2024

Fossil-informed biogeographic analysis suggests Eurasian regionalization in crown Squamata during the early Jurassic

"This paper furthers our understanding of the early biogeography of Squamata - a major extant clade."

Mark Young, Handling Editor

29 February 2024

Downsizing a heavyweight: factors and methods that revise weight estimates of the giant fossil whale Perucetus colossus

"Estimating the body size of extinct animals, such as the whale Perucetus, has important implications for understanding the evolution of ecosystems as well as the life histories and biology of individual species. This contribution advances the discussion around body size estimates for a very large whale."

Andrew Farke, Handling Editor

21 February 2024

Arthrological reconstructions of the pterosaur neck and their implications for the cervical position at rest

"Not only includes important and interesting new information on neck posture and mobility in pterosaurs, it integrates that new material with a lot of recently-published work on other archosaurs."

Mathew Wedel, Handling Editor

31 January 2024

New materials of plesiacerathere (Perissodactyla, Rhinocerotidae) from the late Early Miocene of Northern China

"A new species of a primitive acerathere rhinoceros, Plesiaceratherium tongxinense, is described on the basis of very well-preserved new remains recovered at northern China. This species lived during the late Early Miocene, and has a phylogenetic basal position within Plesiaceratherium. The data provided by this study let to understand better the variability and biodiversity of Miocene Eurasian rhinos."

Blanca Moncunill-Solé, Handling Editor

20 December 2023

Shedding light on the Ophel biome: the trans-Tethyan phylogeography of the sulfide shrimp Tethysbaena (Peracarida: Thermosbaenacea) in the Levant

"Subterranean species are highly understudied and this manuscript furthers the knowledge on a wide-ranging group of crustaceans, which may translate into increased knowledge of biogeographic and evolutionary processes in general."

Barbara Langille, Handling Editor

14 November 2023

Osteology of the axial skeleton of Aucasaurus garridoi: phylogenetic and paleobiological inferences

"The article provides for the first time a thorough description of an important specimen. I expect that it will be cited frequently."

Mathew Wedel, Handling Editor

14 November 2023

Bite and tooth marks on sauropod dinosaurs from the Morrison Formation

"The Morrison Formation is one of the iconic depositional series for dinosaur fossils, and this study gives an in-depth examination of tooth marks on sauropod fossil from multiple localities."

Mark Young, Handling Editor

10 November 2023

Critical re-examination of known purported fossil Bombycoidea (Lepidoptera)

"Heikkilä and colleagues provide a vital assessment of Bombycoidea fossils (or those purported to belong to this superfamily). Close and critical examination of fossils is important in downstream divergence time estimation and secondary calibrations derived from those, so the identification of fossils is the key stage."

Joseph Gillespie, Handling Editor

11 October 2023

Automatic identification and morphological comparison of bivalve and brachiopod fossils based on deep learning

"The study provides an interesting comparison of machine learning approaches in the accuracy of distinguishing brachiopods and bivalves."

Kenneth De Baets, Handling Editor

31 July 2023

The tetrapod fauna of the upper Permian Naobaogou Formation of China: 10. Jimusaria monanensis sp. nov. (Dicynodontia) shows a unique epipterygoid

"The Ms is part of a series of contributions on the important late Permian tetrapod assemblage from the Naobaogou Formation of China, pivotal to our understanding of turnover around the Permo-Triassic mass extinction in the region. Additionally, it anatomically describes new cranial structures previously unknown in dicynodot sinapsids."

Claudia Marsicano, Handling Editor