Abstract Analyses of ancient food webs reveal important paleoecological processes and responses to a range perturbations throughout Earth's history, such as climate change. These can inform our forecasts future biotic similar perturbations. However, previous analyses rarely accounted for key differences between modern community data, particularly selective loss soft-bodied taxa during fossiliza...

We consider restoring the bilateral symmetry of an object which has been deformed by compression. This problem arises in paleontology, where symmetric bones are compressed in the process of fossilization. Our input is a user-selected set P of point-pairs on the deformed object, which are assumed to be mirror-images in some undeformed set AP , with some added noise. We carefully formulate the pr...

The objections of Xiao et al. to our reinterpretation are based on incorrect assumptions. The lack of nanocrystals lining the nuclear membrane is consistent with membrane fossilization, and nucleus volume through development is correlated to cytoplasm volume and fully consistent with sizes of eukaryote nuclei. Identical envelope structure unites the developmental stages of the fossils, and 2 cl...

Abstract. We report on Precambrian microfossils from igneous rocks of the Volyn pegmatite district, associated with Paleoproterozoic Korosten pluton, northwestern Ukraine. The fossils were recovered meter-sized miarolitic cavities and show a well-preserved 3D morphology, mostly filamentous but large variety types also in irregular, flaky shapes reminiscent former biofilms, as well rare spherica...

Evolution of flight in maniraptoran dinosaurs is marked by the acquisition of distinct avian characters, such as feathers, as seen in Archaeopteryx from the Solnhofen limestone. These rare fossils were pivotal in confirming the dinosauria-avian lineage. One of the key derived avian characters is the possession of feathers, details of which were remarkably preserved in the Lagerstätte environmen...

The geographic range sizes frequency distribution (RFD) within clades is typically right-skewed with untransformed data, and bell-shaped or slightly left-skewed under the log-transformation. This means that most species within clades occupy diminutive ranges, whereas just a few species are truly widespread. A number of ecological and evolutionary explanations have been proposed to account for t...

In the early period of implementation of the policy of opening China to the outside world when many English teachers of China paid great attention to the puzzling phenomenon: “New Concept English” and “English 900”enjoyed great popularity in China and they were used as the textbook in many English training institutions. They used to be broadcast constantly by TV and radio stations and many pare...