The European Plio-Pleistocene Mimomys (Hintonia) occitanus-ostramosensis lineage of arvicolid rodents appears to present a genuine case of gradual evolution. Analysis of numerous dental samples recorded from 3 to 1.5 ma by several biometrical methods led to the following conclusions: samples from the whole geographical area order into a morphological continuum (chronomorphocline); the successive populations in the trend show important overlap of their variation; and the absence of stasis or any interruption in the trend, combined with its unidirectionality, suggests genuine phyletic gradualism. The chronomorphocline is characterized by an important increase in tooth hypsodonty, by the progressive and continuous development of lateral enamel tracks. Four phases of evolution can be recognized in the lineage, the rates of morphological changes being variable and related to climatic fluctuations (Reuverian, Pretiglian, Tiglian, Eburonian). Morphological changes are initiated by environmental fluctuations, although the polarity of climatic change is not a determining factor. Environmental changes act as stimulus and release drift processes. Phyletic gradualism occurring over such a wide area implies extensive gene flow, and suggests that only general, not local, environmental components act to produce the observed morphological changes.

Quantifying the effects of taphonomic processes on species abundances in time-averaged death assemblages (DAs) is pivotal for paleoecological inference. However, fidelity estimates based on conventional “live-dead” comparisons are fundamentally ambiguous: (1) data on living assemblages (LAs) are based on a very short period of sampling and thus do not account for biological variability in the LA, (2) LAs are sampled at the same time as the DA and thus do not necessarily reflect past LAs that contributed to the DA, (3) compositions of LAs and DAs can be autocorrelated owing to shared cohorts, and (4) fidelity estimates are cross-scale estimates because DAs are time-averaged and LAs are not. Some portion of raw (total) live-dead (LD) variation in species composition thus arises from incomplete sampling of LAs and from biological temporal variation among LAs (together = premortem component of LD variation), as contrasted with new variation created by interspecific variation in population turnover and preservation rates and by the time-averaging of skeletal input (together = postmortem component of LD variation). To tackle these problems, we introduce a modified test for homogeneity of multivariate dispersions (HMD) in order to (1) account for temporal autocorrelation in composition between LAs and DAs and (2) decompose total LD compositional variation into premortem and postmortem components, and we use simulations to evaluate the contribution of within-habitat time-averaging on the postmortem component. Applying this approach to 31 marine molluscan data sets, each consisting of spatial replicates of LAs and DAs in a single habitat, we find that total LD variation is driven largely by variation among LAs. However, genuinely postmortem processes have significant effects on composition in 25–65% of data sets (depending on the metric) when the effects of temporal autocorrelation are taken into account using HMD. Had we ignored the effects of autocorrelation, the effects of postmortem processes would have been negligible, inflating the similarity between LAs and DAs. Simulations show that within-habitat time-averaging does not increase total LD variation to a large degree—it increases total LD variation mainly via increasing species richness, and decreases total LD variation by reducing dispersion among DAs. The postmortem component of LD variation thus arises from differential turnover and preservation and multi-habitat time-averaging. Moreover, postmortem processes have less effect on the compositions of DAs in habitats characterized by high variability among LAs than they have on DAs in temporally stable habitats, a previously unrecognized first-order factor in estimating postmortem sources of compositional variation in DAs.

Small mammal species distribution, density, and composition of modern and Pleistocene faunas from the eastern United States provide information about environmental gradients. Higher summer temperatures and less effective moisture along a transect from the northeast to the southwest can be correlated with the distribution of small mammals as well as decreases in the total number of shrew and vole species. Relative frequencies of “boreal”, “deciduous”, and “steppe” species are more equal in late Wisconsin than modern faunas which are predominantly composed of only one group. A higher vole species density is prevalent in each late Wisconsin fauna and eleven of twelve of these faunas have a higher shrew species density than the corresponding modern fauna. Many shrew and vole species that are today endemic to the boreal provinces were cosmopolitan during the late Wisconsin. Moderate environmental gradients of the equable late Wisconsin climates allowed integration of boreal species with resident species in the south.

Colonies of the fossil bryozoan Archimedes and erect, spiralled species of the living bryozoan Bugula consist of wedge-shaped systems of radially diverging, bifurcated branches that extend from a helical axial margin. Morphology of these colonies may be simulated using few growth rules. These include 1) radius of the central helical margin (RAD), 2) rate of climb of central helical margin (ELEV), 3) radial angle between successive branches that originate from the central helical margin (ANG), 4) radial growth of all branches, 5) angle between branches and axis of central helical margin (BWANG), 6) distance between three adjacent, radially diverging branches at which the central branch bifurcates into two branches equally spaced between the two side branches (XMIN), and 7) placement of a spacing bar at base of newly bifurcated branches. In addition, size constraints on the simulations must be stipulated.

Simulations are begun at a proximal point along the central helix where a radial branch originates and are “grown” in repetitive steps by extending the central helical margin a distance distally, determined by ANG, then censusing established branches for XMIN in order to bifurcate appropriate branches and extend others in several short growth increments, etc. Growth of branches ceases at stipulated maximum width, and growth of the entire simulation ceases at stipulated maximum height.

The presence of a helical inner margin marked by uniformly spaced bifurcations generates the spiralled shape, i.e. ELEV must be a positive number. Values of RAD, ELEV (not zero), ANG and BWANG determine form of the spiral; the other growth rules apply to bifurcated unilaminate branch systems in general.

The range of observed colony forms and hypothetical morphospace of Archimedes may be simulated by varying BWANG, XMIN, and ELEV. RAD was kept constant, as its variation would be redundant with XMIN and ELEV. Variation in ANG affects near-helix morphology, but its influence is undetectable beyond this zone. Variability within colonies may be simulated by assigning to each variable a standard deviation with mean-centered randomly chosen values for each decision.

Understanding the extent to which the reported fossil record reflects biological history, rather than preservational artifacts or other biasing factors, remains one of the central issues in the interpretation of the history of life on Earth. The development of large interactive paleontological databases, such as the Paleobiology Database (PBDB), allows detailed analyses of the patterns of occurrence, both regionally and globally, of taxa in the fossil record and makes possible testing hypotheses of the controls of the patterns. An analysis of data from the PBDB shows that most genera in the fossil record are rare, whereas a relatively small percentage of taxa account for a disproportionate share of the total occurrences. These ubiquitous taxa tend to be speciose and have long stratigraphic ranges. These patterns of occurrence might represent a true biological signal; it is also possible that they reflect taphonomic processes or are the result of taxonomic practice. In particular, common taxa may be taxonomic wastebaskets, i.e., residual and polyphyletic groups resulting from inadequate systematic attention and/or from taphonomic biases resulting in inadequate specimens being preferentially placed in particular genera. A conceptual model for the development of taxonomic wastebaskets suggests that these taxa should be speciose, widely distributed, common, and old (in terms of year of first description), and that they should be the nominate forms for higher taxa. Our analyses suggest that many of the common taxa in the PBDB are consistent with two or more of these expectations and are thus good candidates for being wastebaskets. These taxa are, however, only a small percentage of total genera. A more detailed examination of one group, early gastropods, indicates that possible wastebaskets still are present in a group that has received much recent systematic work. Given that likely wastebasket taxa are a small fraction of all genera, they probably have little effect on overall temporal patterns of generic richness. Their impact on other types of metrics, such as turnover rates or metrics of community diversity or biogeographic similarity, however, might be quite important.

Morphological analysis of four higher taxa of fossil marine invertebrates shows that, over the history of paleontology, there is no general tendency for morphologically extreme or modal species and genera to be described preferentially early or late. Reconstructing the expected evolutionary sequences of morphological disparity that would have been estimated at various times during the past century and a half reveals features that are sensitive to sampling (for example, peak trilobite disparity in the Ordovician, peak of post-Paleozoic crinoid disparity in the Triassic, and peak blastoid disparity in the Permian), as well as more robust features (for example, increase in trilobite disparity from the Cambrian to the Ordovician, continued increase in trilobite disparity despite a drop in taxonomic diversity after the Early Ordovician, decrease in blastoid disparity from the Devonian to the Carboniferous, and increase in crinoid disparity from the Jurassic to the Cretaceous followed by decline during the Cretaceous). Although we still have much to learn about the evolution of form, in many respects our view of the history of biological diversity is mature.

Scleractinian corals have two fundamentally different life strategies, which can be inferred from morphological criteria in fossil material. In the non-photosymbiotic group nutrition comes exclusively from heterotrophic feeding, whereas the photosymbiotic group achieves a good part of its nutrition from algae hosted in the coral’s tissue. These ecologic differences arose early in the evolutionary history of corals but with repeated evolutionary losses and presumably also gains of symbiosis since then. We assessed the biodiversity dynamics and environmental occupancy of both ecologic groups to identify times when the evolutionary losses of symbiosis as inferred from molecular analyses might have occurred and if these can be linked to environmental change. Two episodes are likely: The first was in the mid-Cretaceous when non-symbiotic corals experienced an origination pulse and started to become more common in deeper, non-reef habitats and on siliciclastic substrates initiating a long-term offshore trend in occupancy. The second was around the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary with another origination pulse and increased occupancy of deep-water settings in the non-symbiotic group. Environmental factors such as rapid global warming associated with mid-Cretaceous anoxic events and increased nutrient concentrations in Late Cretaceous–Cenozoic deeper waters are plausible mechanisms for the shift. Turnover rates and durations are not significantly different between the two ecologic groups when compared over the entire history of scleractinians. However, the deep-water shift of non-symbiotic corals was accompanied by reduced extinction rates, supporting the view that environmental occupancy is a prominent driver of evolutionary rates.

The EDTA-soluble fractions extracted from rostra of two late Cretaceous belemnites (Cephalopoda), Gonioteuthis and Belemnitella, were divided into an humic acid and a fulvic acid fraction (the latter was absent in Belemnitella). The extracts are compared with preparations from shells of two recent cephalopods, Nautilus pompilius and Sepia officinalis. Use was made of immunology, amino acid analysis, pyrolysis mass spectrometry and some other techniques.

The fulvic acid fraction of Gonioteuthis, a mixed peptide-like saccharide-like substance, produced confluent immunodiffusion patterns with an EDTA-soluble Nautilus extract against anti-Nautilus rabbit serum. The humic acid of Gonioteuthis did not contain D-alloisoleucine and its amino acid composition was very similar to that of the EDTA-insoluble fraction of Nautilus. This humic acid was enriched in polyphenol, which may be due to chemical reaction of peptides and carbohydrates during diagenesis. It is concluded that both fractions of Gonioteuthis are original belemnite materials that have undergone only minor alterations during diagenesis.

This is an exploratory study of biochemical compounds derived from fossils, with particular emphasis on immunological methods.

The Cambrian Radiation marks the appearance of representatives of virtually all major skeletonized phyla in the fossil record and clearly represents a fundamental episode in the history of life. Furthermore, the tempo and mode of this evolutionary event have been the subject of intense debate. One area that has been debated is how so many phylum-level body plans can have evolved in such a geologically brief period. Some have argued that there was enhanced morphological flexibility and fewer evolutionary constraints at this time, leading to greater morphological disparity of Early Cambrian faunas. Others have claimed that this is not true because the evolution of most of the animal phyla significantly predates the radiation or because they failed to detect a signature of decreasing morphological disparity through time. At present, the higher-level patterns of diversification during this time period and the relevant implications for Early Cambrian uniqueness are areas of active research interest and debate. Recognizing this debate, we used both a phylogenetic and a morphometric framework to study whether there is a signature of increasing morphological constraint and decreasing flexibility through time within one of the clades that is a significant constituent of the Early Cambrian biota, specifically, the olenelloid trilobites. In this species-rich clade, we found no evidence that morphological changes were becoming either increasingly constrained or less flexible in one of the dominant Early Cambrian metazoan clades as it passed through the Cambrian Radiation.

The end-Permian mass extinction, the largest extinction of the Phanerozoic, led to a severe reduction in both taxonomic richness and ecological complexity of marine communities, eventually culminating in a dramatic ecological restructuring of communities. During the Early Triassic recovery interval, disaster taxa proliferated and numerically dominated many marine benthic invertebrate assemblages. These disaster taxa include the bivalve genera Claraia, Unionites, Eumorphotis, and Promyalina, and the inarticulate brachiopod Lingularia. The exact nature and extent of their dominance remains uncertain. Here, a quantitative analysis of the dominance of these taxa within the fossil communities of Panthalassa and Tethys benthic realms is undertaken for the stages of the Early Triassic to examine temporal and regional changes in disaster-taxon dominance as recovery progresses. Community dominance and disaster-taxon abundance is markedly different between Panthalassic and Tethyan communities. In Panthalassa, community evenness is low in the Induan stage but increases significantly in the Smithian and Spathian. This is coincident with a significant decrease in the relative abundance and occurrence frequency of the disaster taxa, most notably of the low-oxygen-affinity taxa Claraia and Lingularia. While the disaster taxa are present in post-Induan assemblages, other taxa, including two articulate brachiopod genera, outrank the disaster taxa in relative abundance. In the Tethys, assemblages are generally more even than contemporaneous Panthalassic assemblages. We observe an averaged trend toward more even communities with fewer disaster taxa in both Panthalassic and Tethyan assemblages over time.

Chitin occurs in a variety of invertebrates, especially in arthropod cuticles, but is rarely reported in the fossil record. Although it has been detected in fossils as old as Middle Cambrian and Silurian, the majority of records come from much younger, Cenozoic deposits. In this paper, we report the preservation of chitin in Early Jurassic neritimorph gastropod egg capsules deposited in bivalve shells from prodelta-deltafront and nearshore paleoenvironments of the Holy Cross Mountains, Poland. We used a number of analytical methods to confirm the presence of chitin preserved in these ancient fossils. This is the first record of chitin preservation in Mesozoic deposits that, interestingly, do not follow the conventional Konservat-Lagerstätten manner of preserving soft-bodied and non-biomineralized organisms. We believe that deltaic settings characterized by episodic, high input of fluvial deposits, oligohaline conditions, and oxygen-poor microenvironment within the sediment—as well as early cementation of sediment infilling the shells—were crucial for chitin preservation. The preservation of chitin in such recalcitrant structures as egg capsules and deposits that formed outside conventional Konservat-Lagerstätten conditions renders it likely similar deposits may yield promise for discoveries of similar biological macromolecules.

Faunal abundance and fossil size and shape data from microvertebrate localities in the Upper Cretaceous Judith River Formation of south-central Montana illustrate that even when located in similar sedimentary facies, concentrations of vertebrate microfossils may exhibit strikingly different taphonomic profiles. Degrees of microfossil size and shape sorting may vary even among sites from the same sedimentary facies. In some instances, such variations may make it impossible to disregard taphonomic causes for differences sites exhibit in paleofaunal abundances. To limit the possibility that taphonomically generated faunal differences might be mistaken for true differences in paleoecology, comparisons of paleofaunal abundances should be restricted to microvertebrate sites both from similar sedimentary facies and with similar profiles of fossil sizes and shapes.

Experienced workers in a field are unlikely to change their assessment of basic philosophical issues. Einstein for example never accepted the indeterminacy required by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, despite the urgings of Max Born and virtually all others. Similarly even earlier, some older workers had refused to accept the young Einstein's theories. Now if issues in physics are not open and shut, they are even less so in paleontology. Possibly it is useful to probe the underlying basic philosophical background to our discipline. The purpose of the present article is to indicate that the inductive, deterministic approaches which have been used almost exclusively in paleontology have stringent limitations. For some types of problems, deductive stochastic processes are more interesting. If we can make the distinction of ‘few’ versus ‘many,’ then it is quite easy to consider deterministic explanations for the individual cases (the movement of individual molecules) but to reserve stochastic explanations for the ensembles of events (the movement of molecules too numerous to count).

It has been claimed that articulate brachiopods are excluded from turbulent environments by the weakness of their pedicle attachment. The evidence does not support this conclusion. Experiments on the force required to remove brachiopods from their substrate show that removal force often equals that of bivalve mussels from turbulent environments having the same valve area. Intertidal brachiopods probably occupy cryptic habitats to avoid desiccation, not to avoid waves. Subtidal brachiopods are abundant in tidal currents of 4 knots (2 m/sec) where they are usually attached in exposed positions.

Although paleoecologists often assume that the size of the pedicle foramen is directly proportional to attachment strength, the relationship is not precise. Experimental detachment of brachiopods resulted from failure of the substrate, pedicle-substrate attachment, pedicle, or pedicle adjustor muscles, in approximately equal frequencies. At the same attachment strength, the foramen in Terebratalia is four times the size of the foramen in Hemithiris.

Although subapical foramina are supposedly unable to enlarge as the brachiopod grows, the subapical foramen of Hemithiris appears to do so.

Small terrestrial vertebrates are not capable of maintaining a constant body temperature (±2°C) without a relatively high metabolism. The amount of temperature variability during bone growth can be determined using oxygen isotopes from bone phosphate because fractionation of oxygen isotopes between body fluid and bone phosphate is dependent upon temperature. Fluctuation of body temperature during the early phase of growth in juvenile ectotherms should result in high intra- and interbone isotopic variability, whereas juvenile endotherms should have low isotopic variability resulting from the maintenance of homeothermy. Analyses of juvenile Hypacrosaurus individuals indicate a pattern of low isotopic heterogeneity suggestive of endothermy.

Numerous environmental and intrinsic biotic factors have been sought to explain patterns in diversity and turnover. Using taxonomically vetted and sampling-standardized data sets of more than 50,000 taxonomic occurrences in the Paleobiology Database (PaleoDB) we tested whether habitat breadth predicts genus durations and diversity dynamics of marine Mesozoic bivalves, and whether this effect is independent of the well-known positive relationship between geographic range and longevity. We defined the habitat breadth of a genus as a function of its realized ranges in water depth, substrate type, and grain size of the substrate. Our analysis showed that mean values of extinction and origination rates are significantly higher for narrowly adapted genera compared to broadly adapted genera, with differences being evident in all analyzed stratigraphic intervals. Linear models showed that both geographic range and habitat breadth have an independent effect on genus durations and on diversity dynamics. These results reaffirm the role of geographic range and furthermore suggest that habitat breadth is an equally important key predictor of extinction risk and origination probability in Mesozoic marine bivalves. Habitat generalists, regardless of their geographic range, are generally less prone to extinction. Conversely, widely distributed genera that are more specialized may be more endangered than one would expect from their geographic range alone. Extinction rates tend to be higher for specialized genera in both background and mass extinctions, suggesting that wide habitat breadth universally buffers against extinction. The trajectories of origination rates through time differ from those of extinction rates. Whereas there is no pronounced ecological selectivity in origination in the Triassic and most of the Jurassic, Cretaceous origination rates are higher for specialized genera. This may best be explained by diversity-dependence. When diversity levels reach a critical point a further increase in diversity is achieved by elevated origination rates of more specialized forms.

The longevity of genera living at the edge of the early Ordovician North American plate is related to their position on the former shelf, that is preserved in richly fossiliferous sections of Spitsbergen. Genera which endure for a long period (SO Myr or more) tend to be confined to shallow-water sites associated with algal mounds at the edge of the carbonate platform (illaenid-cheirurid community type) or deep-water sites with low oxygen concentration, and probably beneath the thermocline (olenid community type). The latter includes “conservative” forms that have survived from the Cambrian. The long ranges of the olenid community type are attributed to the adaptation of only a few genera to a highly specific, stressed environment. The endurance of the illaenid-cheirurid genera is due to the persistence of the tropical shelf-edge habitat, with high predictability of resources, to which the Ordovician forms became adapted early on. The nileid community type, which occurred between the platform edge and olenid-bearing environment, was the site of rapid generic turnover and may have been the source for subsequent recruitment into other environments. The inner shelf also had rapid generic replacement, dominated by a single family, the Bathyuridae. Rapidity of evolution in this site may be due to the spatial heterogeneity of the epeiric environment, as in the Devonian phacopids studied by Eldredge (1974).

Documenting past environmental disturbances will provide a very incomplete explanation of extinctions until more data on intrinsic (e.g., phylogenetic) responses to disturbances are collected. Taxonomic selectivity can be used to infer phylogenetic inheritance of extinction-biasing traits. Selectivity patterns among higher taxa, such as between mammals and bivalves, are well documented. Selectivity patterns among lower taxa (genus, species) have great potential for understanding the dynamics underlying higher taxic turnover. Two echinoid data sets, of fossil and living taxa, indicate that species extinctions do not occur randomly within genera. Reverse rarefaction estimates of past species extinction rates assume random species extinction within higher taxa, so these widely cited extinction estimates may be inaccurate. Revised estimates based on a simulated curve imply that past species extinctions rates may be 6%–15% lower than previously cited. Possible causes for the observed selectivity patterns are discussed. These include nonrandom phylogenetic nesting of species with traits often cited as enhancing extinction vulnerability, into certain taxa. Such traits include low abundance, large body size, narrow niche breadth, and many others. Phylogenetic nesting of extinction-biasing traits at many taxonomic levels does not predict that a dichotomy of mass-background selectivity based on a few traits will occur. Instead, it predicts patterns of selectivity at many taxonomic levels, and at many spatio-temporal scales.

Molecular data are becoming an indispensable tool for the reconstruction of phylogenies. Fossil molecular data remain scarce, but have the potential to resolve patterns of deep branching and provide empirical tests of tree reconstruction techniques. A total evidence approach, combining and comparing complementary morphological, molecular and stratigraphical data from both recent and fossil taxa, is advocated as the most promising way forward because there are several well-established problems that can afflict the analysis of molecular sequence data sometimes resulting in spurious tree topologies. The integration of evidence allows us to: (1) choose suitable taxa for molecular phylogenetic analysis for the question at hand; (2) discriminate between conflicting hypotheses of taxonomic relationship and phylogeny; (3) evaluate procedures and assumptions underlying methods of building trees; and (4) estimate rates of molecular evolution in the geological past. Paleontology offers a set of independent data for comparison and corroboration of analyses and provides the only direct means of calibrating molecular trees, thus giving insight into rates of molecular evolution in the geological past.