The first articulated skeletons of enigmatic Late Cretaceous billfish-like actinopterygians.

Only few candidates of Mesozoic fishes with a similar body plan and ecological niche to the modern billfishes are suggested as their analogues. Several specimens were recovered from Cenomanian deposits in Germany and Lebanon and display a billfish-like fusiform body with elongated premaxillae. They are found close to the plethodids and show a unique combination of characters (rostrum pointed and extremely elongated, double articular head of the quadrate, anteroposteriorly elongated abdominal centra indicating a slender body and different types of scales on the body) allowing their inclusion in a new genus.

Does age matter?-Efficiency of mechanical food break down in Tupaia belangeri at different ages.

The relationship of food comminution and individual age in Tupaia belangeri is investigated. It is hypothesized that with increasing age the performance of the molar dentition decreases due to progressive tooth wear. While this relationship is well-documented for herbivores, age-related test series are largely lacking for insectivorous mammals.

Unique bone microanatomy reveals ancestry of subterranean specializations in mammals.

Acquiring a subterranean lifestyle entails a substantial shift for many aspects of terrestrial vertebrates' biology. Although this lifestyle is associated with multiple instances of convergent evolution, the relative success of some subterranean lineages largely remains unexplained. Here, we focus on the mammalian transitions to life underground, quantifying bone microanatomy through high-resolution X-ray tomography.

A derived dryolestid mammal indicates possible insular endemism in the Late Jurassic of Germany.

The Langenberg Quarry near Bad Harzburg has yielded the first Jurassic stem therian mammal of Germany, recovered from Kimmeridgian (Late Jurassic) near shore deposits of a palaeo-island within the Lower Saxony Basin of the European archipelago. The new stem therian is represented by one lower and three upper molars. Hercynodon germanicus gen.

Parasitoid biology preserved in mineralized fossils.

About 50% of all animal species are considered parasites. The linkage of species diversity to a parasitic lifestyle is especially evident in the insect order Hymenoptera. However, fossil evidence for host-parasitoid interactions is extremely rare, rendering hypotheses on the evolution of parasitism assumptive.

Preservation of three-dimensional anatomy in phosphatized fossil arthropods enriches evolutionary inference.

External and internal morphological characters of extant and fossil organisms are crucial to establishing their systematic position, ecological role and evolutionary trends. The lack of internal characters and soft-tissue preservation in many arthropod fossils, however, impedes comprehensive phylogenetic analyses and species descriptions according to taxonomic standards for Recent organisms. We found well-preserved three-dimensional anatomy in mineralized arthropods from Paleogene fissure fillings and demonstrate the value of these fossils by utilizing digitally reconstructed anatomical structure of a hister beetle.

Frontoparietal Bone in Extinct Palaeobatrachidae (Anura): Its Variation and Taxonomic Value.

Palaeobatrachidae are extinct frogs from Europe closely related to the Gondwanan Pipidae, which includes Xenopus. Their frontoparietal is a distinctive skeletal element which has served as a basis for establishing the genus Albionbatrachus. Because little was known about developmental and individual variation of the frontoparietal, and its usefulness in delimiting genera and species has sometimes been doubted, we investigate its structure in Palaeobatrachus and Albionbatrachus by means of X-ray high resolution computer tomography (micro-CT).