Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Paleobiology
Disappearance of Homo floresiensis from Liang Bua alongside seasonal aridification of Flores 61,000-47,000 years ago
Published: 2024-12-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Fresh Water Studies, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Paleobiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Speleology
The cause of the disappearance of the primitive hominin, Homo floresiensis, from the Indonesian island of Flores ~50,000 years ago is a key question in palaeoanthropology. The potential roles of human agency and climate change continue to be debated, but the history of freshwater availability critical to survival at the type locality, Liang Bua, remains unknown. Although speleothem 18O is used [...]
Miocene ant-mealybug trophobiosis imaged with X-Ray micro-computed tomography
Published: 2024-10-26
Subjects: Paleobiology, Paleontology, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Amber is a remarkable preserving medium for Mesozoic and Cenozoic terrestrial biotas, but even when transparency is good, available viewing angles can be limited. The technique of X-ray micro-computed tomography allows inspection from any desired viewpoint and facilitates detailed anatomical measurements, avoiding parallax errors. Here, I show the use of this technique to study an extremely rare [...]
deeptime: an R package that facilitates highly customizable visualizations of data over geological time intervals
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Stratigraphy
Data visualization is a key component of any scientific data analysis workflow and is vital for the summarization and dissemination of complex ideas and results. One common hurdle across the Earth Sciences and other scientific fields remains the effective and reproducible visualization of data over long time intervals (104 – 107 years). Here I introduce the R package deeptime, which provides [...]
Taphonomic Controls on a Multi-Element Skeletal Fossil Record
Published: 2024-08-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Animals with multi-element skeletons, including the vertebrates, echinoderms, and arthropods, are some of the most biodiverse and ecologically important animal groups. Understanding the relative impact of the myriad geological and biological factors which impact on the quality of multi-element skeletal fossils is thus crucial for disentangling perceived changes in biodiversity through time and [...]
The potential of terrestrial and aquatic molluscs for the temporal analysis of Deckenschotter deposits and younger Quaternary sediments from the Swiss Plateau
Published: 2024-05-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Soil Science, Stratigraphy, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Pleistocene shifts in Great Basin hydroclimate seasonality govern the formation of lithium-rich paleolake deposits
Published: 2024-04-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Paleobiology, Sedimentology
Southwestern North America is currently experiencing a multidecadal megadrought, with severe consequences for water resources. However, significant uncertainty remains about how precipitation will change in the 21st century in this semi-arid region. Paleoclimatic records are essential for both contextualizing current change, and for helping constrain the sensitivity of regional hydroclimate to [...]
WITHDRAWN: The potential of terrestrial and aquatic molluscs for the temporal analysis of Deckenschotter deposits and younger Quaternary sediments from the Swiss Plateau
Published: 2024-02-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Changes in mesophotic carbonate-platform export across the end of the last glacial cycle (Saya de Malha Bank, western Indian Ocean)
Published: 2023-11-07
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Geochemistry, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Paleobiology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
The export of neritic material from the top of carbonate platforms is a key process in the construction of their slopes. However, our knowledge of the supply pattern of materials from platforms is dominantly based on platforms lying in the euphotic zone during the present sea-level highstand. This is a somewhat biased perspective as through geological time not all platforms were euphotic. The [...]
Spatial standardization of taxon occurrence data—a call to action
Published: 2023-10-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Statistical Methodology
The fossil record is spatiotemporally heterogeneous: taxon occurrence data have patchy spatial distributions, and this patchiness varies through time. Large-scale quantitative paleobiology studies that fail to account for heterogeneous sampling coverage will generate uninformative inferences at best and confidently draw wrong conclusions at worst. Explicitly spatial methods of standardization are [...]
Combined genomic and imaging techniques show intense arsenic enrichment caused by detoxification in a microbial mat of the Dead Sea shore
Published: 2023-09-26
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Geochemistry, Paleobiology
Microbial mats and microbialites are essential tools for reconstructing early life and its environments. To better understand microbial trace element cycling, a microbial mat was collected from the sinkhole systems of the western shores of the Dead Sea, a dynamic environment exhibiting diverse extreme environments. Intense arsenic enrichment (up to 6.5 million times higher than current water [...]
Mind the uncertainty: Global plate model choice impacts deep-time palaeobiological studies
Published: 2023-06-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Climate, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Geology, Life Sciences, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
1. Global plate models (GPMs) aim to reconstruct the tectonic evolution of the Earth by modelling the motion of the plates and continents through time. These models enable palaeobiologists to study the past distribution of extinct organisms. However, different GPMs exist that vary in their partitioning of the Earth's surface and the modelling of continental motions. Consequently, the preferred [...]
palaeoverse: a community-driven R package to support palaeobiological analysis
Published: 2022-10-26
Subjects: Geology, Paleobiology, Paleontology
1. The open-source programming language ‘R’ has become a standard tool in the palaeobiologist’s toolkit. Its popularity within the palaeobiology community continues to grow, with published articles increasingly citing the usage of R and R packages. However, there are currently a lack of agreed standards for data preparation and available frameworks to support implementation of such standards. [...]
How to drain a megalake: Comments on a study by Palcu et al. (2021) Scientific Reports 11, Art. Nr.: 11471.
Published: 2022-05-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Oceanography, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
In a recent paper by Palcu et al. (2021: Scientific Reports 11, Art. Nr.: 11471), the Cape Panagia section on the Taman peninsula (Russian Black Sea) was dated using magnetostratigraphy, in order to calibrate the timing of previously published regressions of the Paratethys megalake. The authors of the paper claim that this “largest megalake in the geological record” experienced four major [...]
Late Glacial and Holocene Palaeolake History of the Última Esperanza Region of Southern Patagonia
Published: 2022-03-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Hydrology, Paleobiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Volcanology
We undertook multiproxy analyses on two sediment cores from Lago Pato, a small lake basin at 51°S topographically separated from Lago del Toro in Torres del Paine (TdP), to provide insights into glacier dynamics and lake level change in the TdP and Última Esperanza region over the last ~30,000 cal a BP (30 ka). Lago Pato is situated in a region overridden by the Southern Patagonian Icefield [...]
Paleocene to Miocene southern Tethyan carbonate factories of the Southwestern and Western Central Asia
Published: 2022-03-11
Subjects: Geology, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Sedimentology
One hundred and forty-four sections of shallow-water carbonates, deposited between the Paleocene and the Miocene, from the Levant to the Himalaya, have been investigated to analyze the distribution of carbonate facies and carbonate producing organisms. Large benthic foraminifera resulted the volumetrically most important group of carbonate producers during the whole period, with a peak in [...]