In: Fossil Record, 2020, vol. 23, no. 1, p. 1–13
Baenidae is a clade of paracryptodiran turtles known from the late Early Cretaceous to Eocene of North America. The proposed sister-group relationship of Baenidae to Pleurosternidae, a group of turtles known from sediments dated as early as the Late Jurassic, suggests a ghost lineage that crosses the early Early Cretaceous. We here document a new species of paracryptodiran turtle, Lakotemys...
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In: Frontiers in Earth Sc-ience, 2020, vol. 8, p. -
Quantification of ground ice is crucial for understanding permafrost systems and modeling their ongoing degradation. The volumetric ice content is however rarely estimated in permafrost studies, as it is particularly difficult to retrieve. Standard borehole temperature monitoring is unable to provide any ice content estimation, whereas non-invasive geophysical techniques, such as refraction ...
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In: Scientific Reports, 2020, vol. 10, p. 5051
Cenozoic ectothermic continental tetrapods (amphibians and reptiles) have not been documented previously from Antarctica, in contrast to all other continents. Here we report a fossil ilium and an ornamented skull bone that can be attributed to the Recent, South American, anuran family Calyptocephalellidae or helmeted frogs, representing the first modern amphibian found in Antarctica. The two bone...
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In: PeerJ, 2020, vol. 8, p. e8542
Background Indochelys spatulata is an extinct turtle from the Early to Middle Jurassic Kota Formation of the Pranhita–Godavari Gondwana basin, India. The holotype and previously only known specimen is a partially eroded shell that had been collected near Kota village, north of Sironcha, in Maharashtra State. Phylogenetic analyses have consistently suggested placement at the base of the...
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In: PeerJ, 2020, vol. 8, p. e8493
Allosaurus, from the Late Jurassic of North America and Europe, is a model taxon for Jurassic basal tetanuran theropod dinosaurs. It has achieved an almost iconic status due to its early discovery in the late, 19th century, and due to the abundance of material from the Morrison Formation of the western U.S.A., making Allosaurus one of the best-known theropod taxa. Despite this, various...
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In: PeerJ, 2020, vol. 8, p. e8437
Marine limestones and marls in the Langenberg Quarry provide unique insights into a Late Jurassic island ecosystem in central Europe. The beds yield a varied assemblage of terrestrial vertebrates including extremely rare bones of theropod from theropod dinosaurs, which we describe here for the first time. All of the theropod bones belong to relatively small individuals but represent a wide...
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In: PeerJ, 2020, p. e8322
The Southern Caucasus, with its special geographic position and complex topography, is a well-known biodiversity hotspot. However, the formation of this hotspot remains largely unstudied. To reveal this, a thorough study of the fossil record of the region is necessary. In the present paper, we describe for the first time fossil monitor lizards (Varanus sp.) from two late Miocene localities from...
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In: Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, 2019, vol. 60, no. 2, p. 129–155
The fossil record of nonbaenid paracryptodires ranges from the Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) to the Paleocene of North America and Europe only. Earlier remains may be present as early as the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian). Only a single dispersal event is documented between the two continents after their breakup during the Cretaceous in the form of the appearance of the Compsemys lineage in the ...
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In: Cold Regions Science and Technology, 2019, vol. 165, p. 102788
The warming climate is changing the surface dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet, including the balance between snowfall and melt. Increasing surface melt impacts the structure of the relatively porous near-surface layer known as firn. Camp Century, a base abandoned in 1967, now comprises a subsurface debris field within the firn in Northwest Greenland. We collected 80 km of 100 or 250 MHz...
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In: eLife, 2019, vol. 8, p. e43789
The Late Jurassic ‘Solnhofen Limestones’ are famous for their exceptionally preserved fossils, including the urvogel Archaeopteryx, which has played a pivotal role in the discussion of bird origins. Here we describe a new, non-archaeopterygid avialan from the Lower Tithonian Mörnsheim Formation of the Solnhofen Archipelago, Alcmonavis poeschli gen. et sp. nov. Represented by a right...
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