Search results for "FOSSILS"
showing 9 items of 159 documents
Zinc isotopes in Late Pleistocene fossil teeth from a Southeast Asian cave setting preserve paleodietary information
2020
Significance Dietary habits, especially meat consumption, represent a key aspect in the behavior and evolution of fossil hominin species. Here, we explore zinc (Zn) isotope ratios in tooth enamel of fossil mammals. We show discrimination between different trophic levels and demonstrate that Zn isotopes could prove useful in paleodietary studies of fossil hominin, or other mammalian species, to assess their consumption of animal versus plant resources. We also demonstrate the high preservation potential of pristine diet-related Zn isotope ratios, even under tropical conditions with poor collagen preservation, such as the studied depositional context in Southeast Asia. However, assessing the …
La cuisine d’une maison de maître du Haut-Empire à Grand (Vosges)
2013
During excavations conducted in 2011 in Grand (Vosges), a domus dating from the 2nd century and the first half of the 3rd was uncovered. Among the well-preserved vestiges a kitchen was identified with its cooking installations still in situ. These consisted of a hearth, a raised cooking platform and an oven. The kitchen was probably in use for both the residential and the servant’s quarters of the domus. The sediments linked to the use of the kitchen yielded numerous organic remains and pottery sherds dating from the 3rd century. These finds document, at least partially, the kitchenware in use, diet and waste management practices in use in this household. The kitchen stands out as a place t…
A fossil sea urchin from the Celtic site Goincet in the Forez (Poncins, dép. Loire) and a perspective at the meaning of ovum anguinum
2014
Dieser Artikel behandelt die neue Entdeckung eines versteinerten Seeigels in einem archäologischen Fundkontext. Das Exemplar weist die notwendigen Charakteristika auf, um seine Art und seine vermutete Herkunft genauer bestimmen zu können. Der fossile Seeigel wurde wahrscheinlich aus einer Entfernung von mehreren Hundert Kilometern herbeigebracht. Es wird auch sein archäologischer Kontext untersucht, der sich im Bereich einer Straße in einer protourbanen Besiedlung befindet. Die archäologische Schicht mit dem Seeigel wird an das Ende des 1. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. datiert. Weiterhin wurde eine forschungsgeschichtliche Bilanz der Funde von versteinerten Seeigeln in ihrem vorkeltischen, keltische…
Integrated stratigraphy of the Oxfordian global stratotype section and point (GSSP) candidate in the Subalpine Basin (SE France).
2014
44 pages; International audience; An integrated biostratigraphic approach, based on ammonites, calcareous nannofossils, dinoflagellates, combined with sedimentology, carbon-isotope and physical stratigraphy, is proposed for the Subalpine Basin (Thuoux and Saint-Pierre d'Argençon sections). Within the expanded marl deposits of the Terres Noires Fm., the Callovian-Oxfordian boundary is particularly well defined by ammonite taxa from different families (i.e. Cardioceratidae, Oppeliidae, Aspidoceratidae and Perisphinctidae), calcareous nannoplankton (first occurrence of large-sized Stephanolithion bigotii) and dinoflagellate cysts (first occurrence of Wanaea fimbriata). This precise biostratigr…
Revision of Recent and fossil Mixtacandona Klie 1938 (Ostracoda, Candonidae) from Italy, with description of a new species
2017
Although studies on ostracods dwelling in inland subterranean habitats of Italy have increased in the last decades, highlighting a considerable taxonomic diversity, available information is still far from sufficient to understand phylogenetic and biogeographic relationships. Mixtacandona Klie 1938 is one of the most common and diverse genera of ostracods in subterranean waters. Of the 20 living recognized species in the genus, all stygobiontic and restricted to the Palearctic Region, four are known for the Italian peninsula and Sardinia, one of which exclusively as fossil. Several other Recent and fossil taxa attributable to Mixtacandona, but identified at supraspecific level, have been rep…
Concreções calcárias da formação Santana, bacia do Araripe: uma proposta de classificação.
2007
18 pages; The calcareous concretions of the Santana Formation have been known since 1800 thanks to the work of João da Silva Feijó (1800). Their study was promoted internationally by the report of von Spix and von Martius (1823-1831), and their richness in fossil fishes led Silva Santos to name them “ichthyoliths” in 1950. Here we propose a classification for the various types of calcareous concretions that occurred in the Santana Formation (Late Cretaceous, Araripe Basin). We consider their geographic distribution and we propose a terminological uniformization for the descriptions of that material. This will serve future statistical, geographical, geochemical and taphonomical studies that,…
A reappraisal of the purported gastric pellet with Pterosaurian bones from the Upper Triassic of Italy
2015
A small accumulation of bones from the Norian (Upper Triassic) of the Seazza Brook Valley (Carnic Prealps, Northern Italy) was originally (1989) identified as a gastric pellet made of pterosaur skeletal elements. The specimen has been reported in literature as one of the very few cases of gastric ejecta containing pterosaur bones since then. However, the detailed analysis of the bones preserved in the pellet, their study by X-ray microCT, and the comparison with those of basal pterosaurs do not support a referral to the Pterosauria. Comparison with the osteology of a large sample of Middle-Late Triassic reptiles shows some affinity with the protorosaurians, mainly with Langobardisaurus pand…
Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism
2010
The herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were the largest terrestrial animals ever, surpassing the largest herbivorous mammals by an order of magnitude in body mass. Several evolutionary lineages among Sauropoda produced giants with body masses in excess of 50 metric tonnes by conservative estimates. With body mass increase driven by the selective advantages of large body size, animal lineages will increase in body size until they reach the limit determined by the interplay of bauplan, biology, and resource availability. There is no evidence, however, that resource availability and global physicochemical parameters were different enough in the Mesozoic to ha…
Early evolutionary colocalization of the nuclear ribosomal 5S and 45S gene families in seed plants: evidence from the living fossil gymnosperm Ginkgo…
2012
In seed plants, the colocalization of the 5S loci within the intergenic spacer (IGS) of the nuclear 45S tandem units is restricted to the phylogenetically derived Asteraceae family. However, fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) colocalization of both multigene families has also been observed in other unrelated seed plant lineages. Previous work has identified colocalization of 45S and 5S loci in Ginkgo biloba using FISH, but these observations have not been confirmed recently by sequencing a 1.8 kb IGS. In this work, we report the presence of the 45S–5S linkage in G. biloba, suggesting that in seed plants the molecular events leading to the restructuring of the ribosomal loci are much o…