The use of CT scans in palaeontology has a long history. Most X-ray fossils are carried out on previously prepared specimens and seldom unprepared blocks fossils. Here we report the standard medical scanner to detect vertebrate invertebrate inside limestone as an aid subsequent preparation. results were largely successful, with low-resolution images radiodensity thresholds which nevertheless cr...

The sternum is one of the most important and characteristic skeletal elements in living birds, highly adapted for flight and showing a diverse range of morphologies. New exceptional material of young juvenile specimens from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Group in northeastern China reveals the unique sequence of development in the sternum of Enantiornithes, the dominant clade of Cretaceous birds. W...

Temperate montane grasslands and their unique biotas are declining worldwide as they are increasingly being invaded by forests. The origin and persistence of these landscapes have been the focus of such controversy that in many areas their conservation is in doubt. In the USA some biologists have largely dismissed the grass balds of the Southern Appalachians as human artifacts or anomalous and ...

Significant advances in the functional analysis of musculoskeletal systems require the development of modelling techniques with improved focus, accuracy and validity. This need is particularly visible in the fields, such as palaeontology, where unobservable parameters may lie at the heart of the most interesting research questions, and where models and simulations may provide some of the most i...

Fossil feathers, hairs and eyes are regularly preserved as carbonized traces comprised of masses of micrometre-sized bodies that are spherical, oblate or elongate in shape. For a long time, these minute structures were regarded as the remains of biofilms of keratinophilic bacteria, but recently they have been reinterpreted as melanosomes; that is, colour-bearing organelles. Resolving this funda...

1Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Palaeontology & Geobiology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Richard-Wagner-Straße 10, 80333 München, Germany 2Centro de Investigación en Estructuras Microscópicas, Universidad de Costa Rica. P.O. Box 11501-2060, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica 3Centro de Investigaciń en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, Escuela de Biología, U...