Fossil feathers often preserve evidence of melanosomes-micrometre-scale melanin-bearing organelles that have been used to infer original colours and patterns of the plumage of dinosaurs. Such reconstructions acknowledge that evidence from other colour-producing mechanisms is presently elusive and assume that melanosome geometry is not altered during fossilization. Here, we provide the first tes...

Alvinellid polychaete worms form multilayered organic tubes in the hottest and most rapidly growing areas of deep-sea hydrothermal vent chimneys. Over short periods of time, these tubes can become entirely mineralized within this environment. Documenting the nature of this process in terms of the stages of mineralization, as well as the mineral textures and end products that result, is essentia...

Proteinaceous surface layers (S-layers) are highly ordered, crystalline structures commonly found in prokaryotic cell envelopes that augment their structural stability and modify interactions with metals in the environment. While mineral formation associated with S-layers has previously been noted, the mechanisms were unconstrained. Using Sulfolobus acidocaldarius a hyperthermophilic archaeon n...

Underground storage organs (USOs) have been proposed as critical fallback foods for early hominins in savanna, but there has been little discussion as to which habitats would have been important sources of USOs. USOs consumed by hominins could have included both underwater and underground storage organs, i.e., from both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Shallow aquatic habitats tend to offer hi...

Error analysis is a linguistic that focuses on identifying and describing the learner’s error in target language learning. This study grammatical mistakes frequently made by students who took their English placement test after enrolment at Universiti Sultan Azlan Shah. Samples from writing were collected. The errors identified, recorded, categorized analyzed. findings of this shed light most oc...

Structural preservation of complex biological systems from the subcellular to whole organism level in robust forms, enabling dissection and imaging while preserving 3D context, represents an enduring grand challenge in biology. Here we report a simple immersion method for structurally preserving intact organisms via conformal stabilization within silica. This self-limiting process, which we ref...

Abstract The evolutionary history of latex, a widespread chemical defense against insect herbivores, is not fully understood, yet more detailed understanding the fossil record latex could help answer important questions. This is, however, hampered by difficulty recognizing and our still incomplete comprehension processes preserving latex. best-studied comes from middle Eocene Geiseltal lignites...

The discovery in the 1980's that DNA could be extracted and sequenced from extinct animals opened-up a whole new area of research paleobiology. oldest authenticated sequence ever recovered is between 1.65 1.1 million years (My) old extrapolation models on degradation suggest this close to temporal limit survival. However, recent data cell nuclei 30 80 My-old fossil cells plants dinosaurs show p...