Estimates of late Early Cretaceous atmospheric CO from Mongolia based on stomatal and isotopic analysis of Pseudotorellia.

Premise: The Aptian-Albian (121.4-100.5 Ma) was a greenhouse period with global temperatures estimated as 10-15°C warmer than pre-industrial conditions, so it is surprising that the most reliable CO estimates from this time are <1400 ppm.

gen. nov., an unusual cleroid genus with large hypomeral cavities from mid-Cretaceous amber (Coleoptera: Cleroidea).

Beetles have a remote evolutionary history dating back to the Carboniferous, with Mesozoic fossils playing a pivotal role in elucidating the early evolution of extant families. Despite their exceptional preservation in amber, deciphering the systematic positions of Mesozoic trogossitid-like beetles remains challenging. Here, we describe and illustrate a new trogossitid-like lineage from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber, Li, Kolibáč, Liu & Cai, gen.

Tubule system of earliest shells as a defense against increasing microbial attacks.

The evolutionary mechanism behind the early Cambrian animal skeletonization was a complex and multifaceted process involving environmental, ecological, and biological factors. Predation pressure, oxygenation, and seawater chemistry change have frequently been proposed as the main drivers of this biological innovation, yet the selection pressures from microorganisms have been largely overlooked. Here we present evidence that calcareous shells of the earliest mollusks from the basal Cambrian (Fortunian Age, ca.

Fine particulate matter (PM) exposure assessment among active daily commuters to induce behaviour change to reduce air pollution.

Fine particulate matter (PM), a detrimental urban air pollutant primarily emitted by traffic and biomass burning, poses disproportionately significant health risks at relatively limited exposure during commuting. Previous studies have mainly focused on fixed locations when assessing PM exposure, while neglecting pedestrians and cyclists, who often experience higher pollution levels. In response, this research aimed to independently validate the effectiveness of bicycle-mounted low-cost sensors (LCS) adopted by citizens, evaluate temporal and spatial PM exposure, and assess associated health risks in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Deciphering temporal gene expression dynamics in multiple coral species exposed to heat stress: Implications for predicting resilience.

Coral reefs are facing unprecedented threats due to global climate change, particularly elevated sea surface temperatures causing coral bleaching. Understanding coral responses at the molecular level is crucial for predicting their resilience and developing effective conservation strategies. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive gene expression analysis of four coral species to investigate their long-term molecular response to heat stress.

Mongolitria: A new Early Cretaceous three-valved seed from Northeast Asia.

Premise: Fossil seeds recovered from the Early Cretaceous of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China, are described and assigned to Mongolitria gen. nov., a new genus of gymnosperm seed.

A new alvarezsaurid dinosaur (Theropoda, Alvarezsauria) from the Upper Cretaceous Baruungoyot Formation of Mongolia provides insights for bird-like sleeping behavior in non-avian dinosaurs.

Alvarezsauria is a group of early-branching maniraptoran theropods that are distributed globally from the Late Jurassic to the latest Cretaceous. Despite recent increases in the fossil record of this group, the scarcity of complete specimens still restricts interpreting their detailed anatomy, ecology, and evolution. Here, we report a new taxon of derived alvarezsaur, Jaculinykus yaruui gen.

A new method for examining the co-occurrence network of fossil assemblages.

Currently, studies of ancient faunal community networks have been based mostly on uniformitarian and functional morphological evidence. As an important source of data, taphonomic evidence offers the opportunity to provide a broader scope for understanding palaeoecology. However, palaeoecological research methods based on taphonomic evidence are relatively rare, especially for body fossils in lacustrine sediments.

Comment on "Ultrastructure reveals ancestral vertebrate pharyngeal skeleton in yunnanozoans".

Tian . (Reports, 8 July 2022, p. 218) claim that Cambrian yunnanozoan animals are stem vertebrates, based partly on their observation at the nanometer scale of microfibrillar tissue located in the branchial arches.

Sulphate-reducing bacteria-mediated pyrite formation in the Dachang Tongkeng tin polymetallic deposit, Guangxi, China.

Mediation by sulphate-reducing bacteria (SRB) is responsible for pyrite (FeS) formation. The origin of the Dachang tin polymetallic ore field is related to the mineralisation of submarine hydrothermal vent sediments. Here, we investigated SRB in these ores via morphological, chemical, and isotopic analyses.

A recent Cannabis pollen increase on the Iberian Pyrenees.

The continuous, varved and absolutely dated sedimentary record of Lake Montcortès (Iberian Pyrenees) has provided evidence for a distinct and characteristic 20th century (1980s) increase in Cannabis pollen (20C) that persists today. This event was coeval with the geographical shift of the hemp production center in the Iberian Peninsula from east to northeast (where Lake Montcortès lies), which was accompanied by a significant production increase. This increasing trend was fostered by the renewed interest of the paper industry in hemp and was promoted by the onset of European Union subsidies to hemp cultivation.

Rise and fall of Caribbean mangroves.

Mangrove forests, which are essential for the maintenance of terrestrial and marine biodiversity on tropical coasts and constitute the main blue‑carbon ecosystems for the mitigation of global warming, are among the world's most threatened ecosystems. Mangrove conservation can greatly benefit from paleoecological and evolutionary studies, as past analogs documenting the responses of these ecosystems to environmental drivers such as climate change, sea level shifts and anthropogenic pressure. A database (CARMA) encompassing nearly all studies on mangroves from the Caribbean region, one of the main mangrove biodiversity hotspots, and their response to past environmental shifts has recently been assembled and analyzed.

Evolutionary process toward avian-like cephalic thermoregulation system in Theropoda elucidated based on nasal structures.

It has long been discussed whether non-avian dinosaurs were physiologically closer to ectotherms or endotherms, with the internal nasal structure called the respiratory turbinate present in extant endotherms having been regarded as an important clue for this conundrum. However, the physiological function and relevance of this structure for dinosaur physiology are still controversial. Here, we found that the size of the nasal cavity relative to the head size of extant endotherms is larger than those of extant ectotherms, with that of the dromaeosaurid being below the extant endotherms level.

First report on rhinoceros from the late Neogene Qin Basin of Shanxi, China.

Dihoplus is a rhinoceros distributed across East Asia and Europe from the Late Miocene to Pliocene. This study describes a new skull from the Qin Basin in Shanxi Province, China, referred to as Dihoplus ringstroemi, which has long been debated in taxonomic identity. This skull confirms that D.

A well-preserved 'placoderm' (stem-group Gnathostomata) upper jaw from the Early Devonian of Mongolia clarifies jaw evolution.

The origin of jaws and teeth remains contentious in vertebrate evolution. 'Placoderms' (Silurian-Devonian armoured jawed fishes) are central to debates on the origins of these anatomical structures. 'Acanthothoracids' are generally considered the most primitive 'placoderms'.

Molecular characterization of hexokinase (HK) in Haemaphysalis longicornis and evaluation of HK protein- and DNA-based vaccines against adult ticks.

Background: Haemaphysalis longicornis is an obligate hematophagous ectoparasite, which transmits various pathogens to humans, livestock and wild animals. Hexokinase (HK) is a key regulatory enzyme of the glycolytic pathway in the organisms. However, little is known about hexokinase and its functions in ticks.

Carboniferous slab-retreating subduction of backarc oceans: the final large-scale lateral accretion of the southern Central Asian Orogenic Belt.

During Carboniferous time, tremendous juvenile arc crust was formed in the southern Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB), although its origin remains unclear. Herein, we presented zircon U-Pb-Hf and whole-rock geochemical and Sr-Nd isotopic data for a suite of volcanic and pyroclastic rocks from the Khan-Bogd area in southern Mongolia. These Carboniferous pyroclastic rocks generally have some early Paleozoic zircons, probably derived from the granitic and sedimentary rocks of the Lake Zone and the Gobi-Altai Zone to the north, indicative of a continental arc nature.

The molecular evolution of spermatogenesis across mammals.

The testis produces gametes through spermatogenesis and evolves rapidly at both the morphological and molecular level in mammals, probably owing to the evolutionary pressure on males to be reproductively successful. However, the molecular evolution of individual spermatogenic cell types across mammals remains largely uncharacterized. Here we report evolutionary analyses of single-nucleus transcriptome data for testes from 11 species that cover the three main mammalian lineages (eutherians, marsupials and monotremes) and birds (the evolutionary outgroup), and include seven primates.

Gliridae and Eomyidae (Rodentia) of the Miocene Tagay fauna (Olkhon Island, Lake Baikal, Eastern Siberia).

The mall mammals Myomiminae indet. (Gliridae), cf Zheng and Li, 1982 (Eomyidae) and the new species nov. spec (Eomyidae) are described.

Decadal-centennial-scale solar-linked climate variations and millennial-scale internal oscillations during the Early Cretaceous.

Understanding climate variability and stability under extremely warm 'greenhouse' conditions in the past is essential for future climate predictions. However, information on millennial-scale (and shorter) climate variability during such periods is scarce, owing to a lack of suitable high-resolution, deep-time archives. Here we present a continuous record of decadal- to orbital-scale continental climate variability from annually laminated lacustrine deposits formed during the late Early Cretaceous (123-120 Ma: late Barremian-early Aptian) in southeastern Mongolia.

A non-avian dinosaur with a streamlined body exhibits potential adaptations for swimming.

Streamlining a body is a major adaptation for aquatic animals to move efficiently in the water. Whereas diving birds are well known to have streamlined bodies, such body shapes have not been documented in non-avian dinosaurs. It is primarily because most known non-avian theropods are terrestrial, barring a few exceptions.

Utilizing an artificial intelligence system to build the digital structural proteome of reef-building corals.

Background: Reef-building corals play an important role in the marine ecosystem, and analyzing their proteomes from a structural perspective will exert positive effects on exploring their biology. Here we integrated mass spectrometry with newly published ColabFold to obtain digital structural proteomes of dominant reef-building corals.

Results: Of the 8,382 homologous proteins in Acropora muricata, Montipora foliosa, and Pocillopora verrucosa identified, 8,166 received predicted structures after about 4,060 GPU hours of computation.

Large-bodied ornithomimosaurs inhabited Appalachia during the Late Cretaceous of North America.

Reconstructing the evolution, diversity, and paleobiogeography of North America's Late Cretaceous dinosaur assemblages require spatiotemporally contiguous data; however, there remains a spatial and temporal disparity in dinosaur data on the continent. The rarity of vertebrate-bearing sedimentary deposits representing Turonian-Santonian ecosystems, and the relatively sparse record of dinosaurs from the eastern portion of the continent, present persistent challenges for studies of North American dinosaur evolution. Here we describe an assemblage of ornithomimosaurian materials from the Santonian Eutaw Formation of Mississippi.

Full-Length Transcriptome Maps of Reef-Building Coral Illuminate the Molecular Basis of Calcification, Symbiosis, and Circadian Genes.

Coral transcriptomic data largely rely on short-read sequencing, which severely limits the understanding of coral molecular mechanisms and leaves many important biological questions unresolved. Here, we sequence the full-length transcriptomes of four common and frequently dominant reef-building corals using the PacBio Sequel II platform. We obtain information on reported gene functions, structures, and expression profiles.

Early evolution of wing scales prior to the rise of moths and butterflies.

Although scales are a defining and conspicuous feature of moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera), their earliest evolution predates the group but is shrouded by a dearth of fossil evidence. Herein, we report two new species in mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber, representing lineages closely related to Lepidoptera: one represents the extinct Tarachoptera, with dense scales on the fore- and hindwings, while the other is an early lineage of caddisflies, with a hindwing covered by a single layer of angustifoliate scales. A novel phylogenetic analysis of 174 morphological characters and 73 extant and fossil representatives of Mecopterida demonstrates a monophyletic origin of scales in the common ancestor of Tarachoptera, Trichoptera, and Lepidoptera; that Tarachoptera are monophyletic but their scale morphology is plesiomorphic for the whole group; and that scales were lost early in caddisfly evolution before reappearing multiple times within the clade.