Palaeoecology articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    Analysis of sedimentary rocks from the mid-Proterozoic interval reveals traces of protosteroids, suggesting the widespread presence of stem-group eukaryotes that predated and co-existed with the crown-group ancestors of modern eukaryotes.

    • Jochen J. Brocks
    • , Benjamin J. Nettersheim
    •  & Janet M. Hope

  • Article |

    Comparisons of steroid hormone concentrations in dentin samples from fossil mammoth tusks with those from a modern elephant tusk provide evidence of periodic increases in testosterone in the male mammoth characteristic of musth episodes.

    • Michael D. Cherney
    • , Daniel C. Fisher
    •  & Alexei N. Tikhonov

  • Article |

    Analysis of Triton, a high-resolution dataset documenting the macroperforate planktonic foraminifera fossil record, reveals a global climate-linked equatorward shift of ecological and morphological community equitability over the past 8 million years.

    • Adam Woodhouse
    • , Anshuman Swain
    •  & Christopher M. Lowery

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mass spectrometry imaging of long-chain alkenones in sediments from the Cariaco Basin shows that average temperatures remained stable during the Younger Dryas to Holocene transition but seasonality more than doubled and interannual variability intensified.

    • Lars Wörmer
    • , Jenny Wendt
    •  & Kai-Uwe Hinrichs

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The diversity hotspots hypothesis attributes the overall increase in global diversity during the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras to the development of diversity hotspots under prolonged conditions of Earth system stability and maximum continental fragmentation.

    • Pedro Cermeño
    • , Carmen García-Comas
    •  & Sergio M. Vallina

  • Article |

    In extinct species including non-avian dinosaurs, bone density is shown to be a reliable indicator of aquatic behavioural adaptations, which emerged in spinosaurids during the Early Cretaceous.

    • Matteo Fabbri
    • , Guillermo Navalón
    •  & Nizar Ibrahim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A large-scale metagenomic analysis of plant and mammal environmental DNA reveals complex ecological changes across the circumpolar region over the past 50,000 years, as biota responded to changing climates, culminating in the postglacial extinction of large mammals and emergence of modern ecosystems.

    • Yucheng Wang
    • , Mikkel Winther Pedersen
    •  & Eske Willerslev

  • Article |

    A fossil egg unearthed from Cretaceous deposits in Antarctica is more than 20 cm long, exceeds all known nonavian eggs in volume, is soft-shelled, and was perhaps laid by a giant marine lizard such as a mosasaur.

    • Lucas J. Legendre
    • , David Rubilar-Rogers
    •  & Julia A. Clarke

  • Article |

    Oculudentavis khaungraae—a newly discovered theropod from the Cretaceous period of Myanmar—reveals a previously unknown bauplan and ecology associated with miniaturization, highlighting the potential for recovering small-bodied vertebrates from amber deposits.

    • Lida Xing
    • , Jingmai K. O’Connor
    •  & Gang Li

  • Article |

    Optical dating of sediments from Denisova Cave establishes a chronology for its Pleistocene deposits and the associated artefacts, hominin remains and environmental records, which date to between about 300,000 and 20,000 years ago.

    • Zenobia Jacobs
    • , Bo Li
    •  & Richard G. Roberts

  • Article |

    The presence of blubber and distribution of melanophores in a countershading pattern in an Early Jurassic ichthyosaur demonstrate that the evolutionary convergence of these reptiles with extant marine amniotes extends to the cellular and molecular levels.

    • Johan Lindgren
    • , Peter Sjövall
    •  & Mary H. Schweitzer

  • Letter |

    A Triassic stem turtle from China has a mixture of derived characters and plesiomorphic features, including an edentulous beak and a rigid puboischiadic plate.

    • Chun Li
    • , Nicholas C. Fraser
    •  & Xiao-Chun Wu

  • Letter |

    Micro- and nannofossil, trace fossil and geochemical evidence from the Chicxulub impact crater demonstrates that proximity to the asteroid impact site did not determine rates of recovery of marine ecosystems after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

    • Christopher M. Lowery
    • , Timothy J. Bralower
    •  & William Zylberman

  • Article |

    Maiopatagium, a haramiyid from the Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation (around 160 million years ago) of China was specialised for gliding with a patagium (wing membrane) and a fused wishbone, reminiscent of that of birds.

    • Qing-Jin Meng
    • , David M. Grossnickle
    •  & Zhe-Xi Luo

  • Letter |

    Analysis of exceptionally preserved fossils of the Cambrian hyolith Haplophrentis leads to a proposed evolutionary relationship with Lophophorata, the group containing brachiopods and phoronids, on the basis of a newly described tentacular feeding apparatus.

    • Joseph Moysiuk
    • , Martin R. Smith
    •  & Jean-Bernard Caron

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Richard J. Telford
    • , Joseph D. Chipperfield
    •  & H. John B. Birks

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • S. Kathleen Lyons
    • , Joshua H. Miller
    •  & Nicholas J. Gotelli

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • S. Kathleen Lyons
    • , Joshua H. Miller
    •  & Nicholas J. Gotelli

  • Article |

    During much of the last ice age, continental ice sheets prevented humans from migrating into North America from Siberia; an environmental reconstruction of the corridor that opened up between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets reveals that it would have been inhospitable to the initial colonizing humans, who therefore probably entered North America by a different route.

    • Mikkel W. Pedersen
    • , Anthony Ruter
    •  & Eske Willerslev

  • Letter |

    South America was the last habitable continent to be colonized by humans; using a database of 1,147 archaeological sites and 5,464 radiocarbon dates spanning 14,000 to 2,000 years ago reveals two phases of the population history of the continent—a rapid expansion through the continent at low population sizes for over 8,000 years and then a second phase of sedentary lifestyle and exponential population growth starting around 5,000 years ago.

    • Amy Goldberg
    • , Alexis M. Mychajliw
    •  & Elizabeth A. Hadly

  • Letter |

    New excavations in Liang Bua, where the remains of the ‘Hobbit’ (Homo floresiensis) were discovered, show that this diminutive human species used this cave between 190,000 and 50,000 years ago, and not until as recently as 12,000 years ago as previously interpreted; modern humans have been present in Australia since around 50,000 years ago, so whether Homo floresiensis survived long enough to witness the arrival of modern humans is still an open question.

    • Thomas Sutikna
    • , Matthew W. Tocheri
    •  & Richard G. Roberts

  • Review Article |

    The fossil record provides a nuanced view of ecosystem collapse over intervals of mass extinction, with abundant, biomineralizing and widespread species preferentially preserved; here the authors collate evidence for ‘mass rarity’ during these intervals, and suggest that the increasing rarity of modern species, rather than their outright extinction, may be a better metric for comparing the current biodiversity crisis to the ‘Big Five’ mass extinctions in the Earth’s history.

    • Pincelli M. Hull
    • , Simon A. F. Darroch
    •  & Douglas H. Erwin

  • Letter |

    Detection of molecular biomarkers characteristic of beeswax in pottery vessels at archaeological sites reveals that humans have exploited bee products (such as beeswax and honey) at least 9,000 years ago since the beginnings of agriculture.

    • Mélanie Roffet-Salque
    • , Martine Regert
    •  & Jamel Zoughlami

  • Letter |

    Tamisiocaris borealis, an Early Cambrian member of the anomalocarids—giant, predatory marine stem arthropods—probably used its frontal appendage to trap microscopic, planktonic animals.

    • Jakob Vinther
    • , Martin Stein
    •  & David A. T. Harper

  • Article |

    By analysing plant and nematode DNA from sites all around the Arctic, it is shown that vegetation before about 10,000 years ago contained more forbs (non-graminoid herbaceous vascular plants) than previously believed, which changes our understanding about the functioning of the diverse northern ecosystem that existed at this time.

    • Eske Willerslev
    • , John Davison
    •  & Pierre Taberlet

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Rong Wang
    • , John A. Dearing
    •  & Marten Scheffer

  • News |

    Tooth analysis shows that European hominins roasted vegetables and may have used medicinal plants.

    • Matt Kaplan

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