University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK - Evolution of land plants changed composition of Earth's crust, study finds

Title:

Evolution of land plants changed composition of Earth's crust, study finds

 

Published:

University of Aberdeen, 30 August 2022

https://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/16300/

 

From the article:

A new study involving an international team of researchers has found that the evolution of land plants caused a sudden shift in the composition of Earth's continents.

 

ALSO SEE

 

Spencer, C.J., Davies, N.S., Gernon, T.M. [et al.]. Composition of continental crust altered by the emergence of land plants. Nature Geoscience, 29 August 2022. 

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00995-2

 

Rhodes University, South Africa - How colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of biodiversity

Title:

How colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of biodiversity

Published:

Rhodes University, 16 February 2022

https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews/howcolonialhistoryandglobaleconomicsdistortourunderstandingofbiodivers.html

From the news article:

In an article published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Rhodes University PhD student Aviwe Matiwane shows, along with six other researchers, how colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity.

Million-year-old mammoth genomes shatter record for oldest ancient DNA [Nature, 17 February 2021]

Title:

Million-year-old mammoth genomes shatter record for oldest ancient DNA 

 

Author:

Ewen Callaway

 

Published:

Nature, 17 February 2021

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00436-x

 

From the article:

Permafrost-preserved teeth, up to 1.6 million years old, identify a new kind of mammoth in Siberia.

 

See also scholarly article:

Title: Million-year-old DNA sheds light on the genomic history of mammoths

Authors: Tom van der Valk, Patrícia Pečnerová, David Díez-del-Molino [et.al]

Published: Nature, 17 February 2021

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03224-9

 

Even Earth's largest-ever sharks needed nurseries for their babies [Nature, 25 November 2020]

Title:

Even Earth's largest-ever sharks needed nurseries for their babies

 

Published:

Nature, 25 November 2020

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03304-2

From the article:

The prehistoric shark Otodus megalodon was an awe-inspiring beast, measuring up to three times the length of the modern great white shark. But even the mightiest of predators were babies once.  

 

Carlos Martínez-Pérez at the University of Valencia in Spain, Humberto Ferrón at the University of Bristol, UK, and their colleagues compared megalodon teeth recently collected at two quarries in northeastern Spain with records of teeth found at eight other sites around the world. A disproportionate number of teeth gathered at five of the nine global locations were from young sharks, suggesting that those sites represent megalodon ‘nurseries’.

St Petersburg State University (Phys.org, 5 June 2020) - Palaeontologists create most detailed virtual 3-D-model of endocranial cast and blood vessels of head of ankylosaurian

Title:
Palaeontologists create most detailed virtual 3-D-model of endocranial cast and blood vessels of head of ankylosaurian

By:
St Petersburg State University

Published:
Phys.org, 5 June 2020
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-palaeontologists-virtual-d-model-endocranial-blood.html

From the article:
Palaeontologists from St Petersburg University have been the first to study in detail the structure of the brain and blood vessels in the skull of the ankylosaur Bissektipelta archibaldi, an herbivorous dinosaur somewhat similar in appearance to a modern armadillo. Scientists produced the first three-dimensional computer reconstruction of a dinosaur endocast made in Russia,a digital cast of its braincase. It made it possible to determine that ankylosaurs, and Bissektipelta in particular, were capable of cooling their brains, had an extremely developed sense of smell, and heard low-frequency sounds. However, their brains were one and a half times smaller than that of modern animals of the same size.