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Monday, April 20, 2015
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3:00 PM US Eastern Daylight Time
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Tuesday, April 21, 2015
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Future of the fossil record
A collection of papers in the Future of the Fossil Record Special Feature highlights the role
of paleontology in exploring the evolution of biological form and the dynamics of species and
major lineages in space and time. According to a series of articles, study of the fossil record
can redefine the ancestry of modern primates, bridge modern community ecology and
paleoecology, and explore the factors behind extinctions and other biotic upheavals during
the Anthropocene epoch. A study of Late Pleistocene sabre-toothed cats and dire wolves
provides a deep-time validation of the importance of developmental integration in stabilizing
morphological evolution, and a study of bivalves shows that modern biodiversity along the
two North American coasts may be understood through analysis of biodiversity dynamics
over the past 3 million years. High-resolution analytical tools can reveal microfeatures in
some of the earliest traces of life on Earth, up to 3.5 billion years old, that allow discoveries
in unexpected habitats and question previous conclusions. An examination of fossils from
the Ediacaran Period, just before the Cambrian explosion that established most modern
animal phyla, reveals aspects of organisms’ ecology and biology that are similar to modern
taxa, including mobility, skeletonization, sexual reproduction, and complex ecosystems.
Another study finds that molecular and paleontological approaches to diversity dynamics can
be synthesized and used to compare rates of past and present-day extinctions.
Article #15-05146: “The future of the fossil record: Paleontology in the 21st century,” by
David Jablonski and Neil H. Shubin.
MEDIA CONTACT: David Jablonski, Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of
Chicago, IL; tel: 773-702-8163; e-mail: <djablons@uchicago.edu>
http://www.eurekalert.org/jrnls/pnas/15-05146.htm