Recently added articles from Paleobiology:

A Message from the Incoming Editors

Apr 01, 2008; Wagner, Peter J; Carrano, Matthew T ... After three years at the University of Michigan, editorship of Pakobiology moved back to the Smithsonian Institution in October 2007. Like all newly installed regimes, we promise both change and continuity, and offer the opportunity to move forward while respecting history. First and foremost, ...

Incumbency, diversity, and latitudinal gradients

Apr 01, 2008; Valentine, James W; Jablonski, David; Krug, Andrew Z; Roy, Kaustuv ... Physical environmental factors have been seen as paramount in determining many large-scale biodistributional patterns in time and space. Although this is probably correct for many situations, this view has become so pervasive that it has led to the neglect of the role of biotic interactions in ...

How green was Cooksonia? The importance of size in understanding the early evolution of physiology in the vascular plant lineage

Apr 01, 2008; Boyce, C Kevin ... Abstract.- Because of the fragmentary preservation of the earliest Cooksonia-like terrestrial plant macrofossils, younger Devonian fossils with complete anatomical preservation and documented gametophytes often have received greater attention concerning the early evolution of vascular ...

A null biogeographic model for quantifying the role of migration in shaping patterns of global taxonomic richness and differentiation diversity, with implications for Ordovician biogeography

Apr 01, 2008; Heim, Noel A ... Abstract.- Biodiversity patterns in the fossil record are often interpreted as functions of only origination and extinction whereas the migration of taxa among regions or paleocontinents is rarely considered. A null biogeographic model is presented that evaluates the role of migration in ...

Ecosystem-wide body-size trends in Cambrian-Devonian marine invertebrate lineages

Apr 01, 2008; Novack-Gottshall, Philip M ... Abstract.- Fossil marine lineages are generally expected to exhibit long-term trends of increasing body size because of inherent fitness advantages or secular changes in environmental conditions. Because empirical documentation of this trend during the Paleozoic has been lacking for most ...

Comparison of water vapor conductance in a titanosaur egg from the Upper Cretaceous of Argentina and a Megaloolithus siruguei egg from Spain

Apr 01, 2008; Jackson, Frankie D; Varricchio, David J; Jackson, Robert A; Vila, Bernat; Chiappe, Luis M ... Abstract.- We calculated water vapor conductance (a product of eggshell porosity) from the first definitively identified sauropod egg (Megaloolithus patagonicus) from the Auca Mahuevo locality in Argentina. We then compared the results with those from M. siruguei (an egg type long ...

Ontogenetic stages in the long bone histology of sauropod dinosaurs

Apr 01, 2008; Klein, Nicole; Sander, Martin ... Abstract.- Long bones (femora, humeri) are the most abundant remains of sauropod dinosaurs. Their length is a good proxy for body length and body mass, and their histology is informative about ontogenetic age. Here we provide a comparative assessment of histologic changes in growth ...

Modeling growth rates for sauropod dinosaurs

Apr 01, 2008; Lehman, Thomas M; Woodward, Holly N ... Abstract.- Sauropod dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals and their growth rates remain a subject of debate. By counting growth lines in histologic sections and relating bone length to body mass, it has been estimated that Apatosaurus attained its adult body mass of about 25,000 ...

Stable isotopes in early Eocene mammals as indicators of forest canopy structure and resource partitioning

Apr 01, 2008; Secord, Ross; Wing, Scott L; Chew, Amy ... Abstract.- The three dimensional structure of vegetation is an important component of ecosystems, yet it is difficult to reconstruct from the fossil record. Forests or woodlands prevailed at mid-latitudes in North America during the early Eocene but tree spacing and canopy structure are ...