Search results for "FOSSILS"
showing 10 items of 159 documents
Oldest Homo and Pliocene biogeography of the Malawi Rift
1993
The Malawi Rift and Pliocene palaeofaunas, which include a hominid mandible attributed to Homo rudolfensis, provide a biogeographical link between the better known Plio-Pleistocene faunal records of East and Southern Africa. The Malawi Rift is in a latitudinal position suitable for recording any hominid and faunal dispersion towards the Equator that was brought on by increased aridity of the Late Pliocene African landscape. The evidence suggests that Pliocene hominids originated in the eastern African tropical domain and dispersed to southern Africa only during more favourable ecological circumstances.
The Gravettian occipital bone from the site of Malladetes (Barx, Valencia, Spain)
2002
Abstract The juvenile occipital bone from the site of Malladetes in Valencia (Spain) is described and compared with other European Pleistocene representatives of the genus Homo . This specimen derives from a Gravettian cultural context and has been AMS radiocarbon-dated to 25,120±240 years bp . As such, it provides evidence on early modern human anatomy from the Central Mediterranean region of the Iberian peninsula. The clear evidence for a late survival of Neandertals in southern Iberia, has led to considerable debate surrounding the biological and cultural interactions between these Pleistocene humans and their early modern human successors, and it is within this context that the Malladet…
Melastomeae come full circle: biogeographic reconstruction and molecular clock dating.
2001
Rhexia, with 11 species in the Coastal Plain province of North America, is the only temperate zone endemic of the tropical eudicot family Melastomataceae. It is a member of the only pantropical tribe of that family, Melastomeae. Based on the chloroplast gene ndhF, we use a fossil-calibrated molecular clock to address the question of the geographic origin and age of Rhexia. Sequences from 37 species in 21 genera representing the tribe's geographical range were analyzed together with five outgroups. To obtain better clade support, another chloroplast region, the rpl16 intron, was added for 24 of the species. Parsimony analysis of the combined data and maximum-likelihood analysis of ndhF alone…
The holocene marine depositional event in the historical centre of palermo
2004
Studi recenti hanno indicato come al di sopra della classica sequenza del Quaternario marino della Piana di Palermo ricorra, in alcunisiti del Centro Storico, un limitato spessore di depositi marini di età post-tirreniana. Con lo scopo di precisare l’età di tali depositi sonostate studiate le associazioni di microfossili di campioni provenienti da sondaggi geognostici. Utilizzando lo schema ecobiozonale anannofossili calcarei recentemente proposto per l’ultima deglaciazione nel Mediterraneo centrale (Canale di Sicilia) detti depositi contengononannoflore attribuibili all’Olocene. Un'analisi al radiocarbonio ha confermato tale attribuzione, limitando alla parte bassadell'Olocene la pertinenz…
Conservation of optical purity of amino acids: a principal problem in biochemical and proto-biochemical systems.
1981
Dor L-amino acids, regardless of their state (peptide-bound or free, in the solid state or in aqueous solution), tend to racemize. In a living cell this racemization is usually compensated by specific degradation and replacement of the unwanted polypeptides that contain the wrong enantiomers. But a few long-lived proteins that are synthesized at or near birth are never replaced. Well investigated is the racemization of L-aspartic acid at a rate of 0.1 to 1.14 per cent per year in proteins from lenses and dentine. Increased racemization of eye lens proteins has been related to a form of human eye disease known as brunescent cataracts. Also quite well investigated is the racemization of amino…
Isotopic ordering in eggshells reflects body temperatures and suggests differing thermophysiology in two Cretaceous dinosaurs
2015
International audience; Our understanding of the evolutionary transitions leading to the modern endothermic state of birds and mammals is incomplete, partly because tools available to study the thermo-physiology of extinct vertebrates are limited. Here we show that clumped isotope analysis of eggshells can be used to determine body temperatures of females during periods of ovulation. Late Cretaceous titanosaurid eggshells yield temperatures similar to large modern endo-therms. In contrast, oviraptorid eggshells yield temperatures lower than most modern endotherms but B6 °C higher than co-occurring abiogenic carbonates, implying that this taxon did not have thermoregulation comparable to mod…
Early human peopling of Sicily: Evidence from the Mesolithic skeletal remains from Grotta d'Oriente
2010
The site of Grotta d'Oriente, Island of Favignana, Sicily has yielded the complete skeleton of an adult female (OB) dated to the Mesolithic age. The cranial morphometry of this individual can provide us with some useful information about the peopling of Sicily in the Early Holocene period.Morphological affinities of OB and other Sicilian Mesolithic specimens were assessed to verify hypotheses concerning the early peopling of Sicily.Craniofacial metric data were employed in a comparative analysis with European Upper Palaeolithic (UP), Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Copper/Bronze age samples, and contemporary Italians. Both a model-free and a model-bound approach were used not only to calculate c…
New Miocene locality in Turkey with evidence on the origin of Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus.
1977
Collections in early Middle Miocene deposits at Pasalar in Turkey have yielded a very rich fauna. Included in this are two hominoid species referred here to Sivapithecus darwini (Abel) 1902 and Ramapithecus wickeri (Leakey) 1962. These are both more primitive morphologically and earlier in time than other species of these genera, and they provide evidence that Sivapithecus and Ramapithecus are closely related and that their early diversification may have occurred not in Africa but in Eurasia.
The emergence of lobsters: phylogenetic relationships, morphological evolution and divergence time comparisons of an ancient group (decapoda: achelat…
2014
Lobsters are a ubiquitous and economically important group of decapod crustaceans that include the infraorders Polychelida, Glypheidea, Astacidea and Achelata. They include familiar forms such as the spiny, slipper, clawed lobsters and crayfish and unfamiliar forms such as the deep-sea and "living fossil" species. The high degree of morphological diversity among these infraorders has led to a dynamic classification and conflicting hypotheses of evolutionary relationships. In this study, we estimated phylogenetic relationships among the major groups of all lobster families and 94% of the genera using six genes (mitochondrial and nuclear) and 195 morphological characters across 173 species of…
Body-axis organization in tetrapods: a model-system to disentangle the developmental origins of convergent evolution in deep time
2022
Convergent evolution is a central concept in evolutionary theory but the underlying mechanism has been largely debated since On the Origin of Species . Previous hypotheses predict that developmental constraints make some morphologies more likely to arise than others and natural selection discards those of the lowest fitness. However, the quantification of the role and strength of natural selection and developmental constraint in shaping convergent phenotypes on macroevolutionary timescales is challenging because the information regarding performance and development is not directly available. Accordingly, current knowledge of how embryonic development and natural selection drive phenotypic …