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Palaeontology is the study of prehistoric species, mostly ones that are extinct. It focuses primarily on fossil data, using a variety of physical, chemical and biological techniques to analyse them.
For a century, scientists pondered whether bird flight evolved by animals gliding down from trees or by creatures running and flapping from the ground up. A landmark 1974 paper reset the debate to focus on the evolution of the flight stroke instead.
Aerodynamic modeling based on the primitive, early Eocene bat Onychonycteris strongly supports a gliding transition to powered flight in mammals, which is facilitated under the hyperdense atmospheric conditions here inferred for the fossil age.
The archaeological site Shinfa-Metema 1 in the lowlands of northwest Ethiopia provides early evidence of intensive riverine-based foraging aided by the likely adoption of the bow and arrow.
An analysis of leaf disparity through time in cycads shows that this group has a dynamic and expanding morphological diversity until the present, and thus does not fit the ‘living fossil’ hypothesis often associated with them.
In this Perspective, the authors discuss current knowledge of deep-time protein preservation and how the chemical changes undergone by proteins affect taphonomic and palaeoproteomic analyses.
For a century, scientists pondered whether bird flight evolved by animals gliding down from trees or by creatures running and flapping from the ground up. A landmark 1974 paper reset the debate to focus on the evolution of the flight stroke instead.