Structural colours, the most intense, reflective and pure colours in nature, are generated when light is scattered by complex nanostructures. Metallic structural colours are widespread among modern insects and can be preserved in their fossil counterparts, but it is unclear whether the colours have been altered during fossilization, and whether the absence of colours is always real. To resolve ...

We compared sponge spicules occurring in surface sediments with those of a living sponge community in a shallow-water reef environment of Bocas del Toro archipelago, Panama, with the goal of evaluating how faithfully spicular analysis reflects the living sponge community. Most megasclere morphotypes present in living species are also found in sediment. On the contrary, microscleres are underrep...

Hydrothermal activity was common on the early Earth and associated micro-organisms would most likely have included thermophilic to hyperthermophilic species. 3.5-3.3 billion-year-old, hydrothermally influenced rocks contain silicified microbial mats and colonies that must have been bathed in warm to hot hydrothermal emanations. Could they represent thermophilic or hyperthermophilic micro-organi...

Due to their extraordinary size sauropod dinosaurs are among the biologically most interesting vertebrates. Recent estimates based on photogrammetric measurements in actual skeletons or on scientific reconstructions place common sauropods consistently in the 15t to 50t category. Sauropods are tetrapods, a body similar to proboscideans (elephants) is combined with a very small head on a very lon...