News

• Seed ferns experimented with complex leaf vein networks 201 million years ago, paleontologists find (Phys.org 16Apr 2024)

└Coiro et al. (2024) Parallel evolution of angiosperm-like venation in Peltaspermales: a reinvestigation of Furcula

• No 'human era' in Earth's geological history, scientists say (Phys.org 22Mar2024)

• Did the first cells evolve in soda lakes? (Phys.org 20Mar2024)

└Cohen et al. (2024) Natural soda lakes provide compatible conditions for RNA and membrane function that could have enabled the origin of life

• Biologists use machine learning to classify fossils of extinct pollen (Phys.org 20Mar2024)

└Adaïmé et al. (2024) Deep learning approaches to the phylogenetic placement of extinct pollen morphotypes

• Why did geologists reject the “Anthropocene” epoch? (Vox 7Mar2024)

• 390 million-year-old fossilized forest is the oldest ever discovered (Live Science 4Mar2024)

└Davies et al. (2024) Earth's earliest forest: fossilized trees and vegetation-induced sedimentary structures from the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) Hangman Sandstone Formation, Somerset and Devon, SW England

• The Anthropocene is not an epoch − but the age of humans is most definitely underway (The Conversation 5Mar2024)

• 'Living fossil' tree frozen in time for 66 million years being planted in secret locations (LiveScience 28Feb2024)

• Study shows orchid family emerged in northern hemisphere and thrived alongside dinosaurs for 20 million years (Phys.org 22Feb2024)

└Pérez-Escobar et al. (2024) The origin and speciation of orchids

• What turned Earth into a giant snowball 700 million years ago? (Phys.org 8Feb 2024)

 └Dutkiewicz et al. (2024) Duration of Sturtian “Snowball Earth” glaciation linked to exceptionally low mid-ocean ridge outgassing

• What was it like when life first sprang forth on Earth? (Big Think 8Jan2024)

• Bickner et al. (2023) Mongolitria: A new Early Cretaceous three‐valved seed from Northeast Asia

• Rare tree fossils preserved with leaves unlike any plant known today (Live Science 2Feb2024)

└Gastaldo et al. (2024) Enigmatic fossil plants with three-dimensional, arborescent-growth architecture from the earliest Carboniferous of New Brunswick, Canada

• What was it like when life first sprang forth on Earth? (Big Think 8Jan2024)

• This plant fossil is really a baby turtle fossil (Phys.org 7Dec2023)

└Palma-Castro et al. (2023) An Early Cretaceous Sphenophyllum or a hatchling turtle?

• 3.42-billion-year-old fossil threads may be the oldest known archaea microbes (Science News 26Jul2021)

└Cavalazzi et al. (2021) Cellular remains in a ~3.42-billion-year-old subseafloor hydrothermal environment

• Flowers may be more ancient than dinosaurs – but scientists can’t agree on when they evolved (The Conversation 9Apr2024)

└Silvestro et al. (2021) Fossil data support a pre-Cretaceous origin of flowering plants

• Fossils show 66 million years of insects eating Kauri trees (Phys.org, 25Nov2020)

└ Donovan et al. (2020) Persistent biotic interactions of a Gondwanan conifer from Cretaceous Patagonia to modern Malesia.

• Argentine fossils uncover history of celebrated conifer group (Phys.org, 18Jun2020)

└ Rosetto-Harris et al. (2020) Eocene Araucaria Sect. Eutacta from Patagonia and floristic turnover during the initial isolation of South America

• The story of Wollemia (Paleoplant Blog, Jan 2009)