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1. Middle to Late Paleocene Leguminosae fruits and leaves from Colombia

   Herrera, Fabiany ; Carvalho, Monica ; Jaramillo, Carlos ; Herendeen, Patrick ( October 2019 , Australian systematic botany)

   Leguminosae are one of the most diverse flowering-plant groups today, but the evolutionary history of the family remains obscure because of the scarce early fossil record, particularly from lowland tropics. Here, we report ~500 compression or impression specimens with distinctive legume features collected from the Cerrejón and Bogotá Formations, Middle to Late Paleocene of Colombia. The specimens were segregated into eight fruit and six leaf morphotypes. Two bipinnate leaf morphotypes are confidently placed in the Caesalpinioideae and are the earliest record of this subfamily. Two of the fruit morphotypes are placed in the Detarioideae and Dialioideae. All other fruit and leaf morphotypes show similarities with more than one subfamily or their affinities remain uncertain. The abundant fossil fruits and leaves described here show that Leguminosae was the most important component of the earliest rainforests in northern South America c. 60–58 million years ago. 

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2. First fossil-leaf floras from Brunei Darussalam show dipterocarp dominance in Borneo by the Pliocene

   https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12949  

   Wilf, Peter ; Zou, Xiaoyu ; Donovan, Michael P. ; Kocsis, László ; Briguglio, Antonino ; Shaw, David ; Slik, JW Ferry ; Lambiase, Joseph J. ( January 2022 , PeerJ)

   The Malay Archipelago is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, but it suffers high extinction risks due to severe anthropogenic pressures. Paleobotanical knowledge provides baselines for the conservation of living analogs and improved understanding of vegetation, biogeography, and paleoenvironments through time. The Malesian bioregion is well studied palynologically, but there have been very few investigations of Cenozoic paleobotany (plant macrofossils) in a century or more. We report the first paleobotanical survey of Brunei Darussalam, a sultanate on the north coast of Borneo that still preserves the majority of its extraordinarily diverse, old-growth tropical rainforests. We discovered abundant compression floras dominated by angiosperm leaves at two sites of probable Pliocene age: Berakas Beach, in the Liang Formation, and Kampong Lugu, in an undescribed stratigraphic unit. Both sites also yielded rich palynofloral assemblages from the macrofossil-bearing beds, indicating lowland fern-dominated swamp (Berakas Beach) and mangrove swamp (Kampong Lugu) depositional environments. Fern spores from at least nine families dominate both palynological assemblages, along with abundant fungal and freshwater algal remains, rare marine microplankton, at least four mangrove genera, and a diverse rainforest tree and liana contribution (at least 19 families) with scarce pollen of Dipterocarpaceae, today’s dominant regional life form. Compressed leaves and rare reproductive material represent influx to the depocenters from the adjacent coastal rainforests. Although only about 40% of specimens preserve informative details, we can distinguish 23 leaf and two reproductive morphotypes among the two sites. Dipterocarps are by far the most abundant group in both compression assemblages, providing rare, localized evidence for dipterocarp-dominated lowland rainforests in the Malay Archipelago before the Pleistocene. The dipterocarp fossils include winged Shorea fruits, at least two species of plicate Dipterocarpus leaves, and very common Dryobalanops leaves. We attribute additional leaf taxa to Rhamnaceae ( Ziziphus ), Melastomataceae, and Araceae ( Rhaphidophora ), all rare or new fossil records for the region. The dipterocarp leaf dominance contrasts sharply with the family’s <1% representation in the palynofloras from the same strata. This result directly demonstrates that dipterocarp pollen is prone to strong taphonomic filtering and underscores the importance of macrofossils for quantifying the timing of the dipterocarps’ rise to dominance in the region. Our work shows that complex coastal rainforests dominated by dipterocarps, adjacent to swamps and mangroves and otherwise similar to modern ecosystems, have existed in Borneo for at least 4–5 million years. Our findings add historical impetus for the conservation of these gravely imperiled and extremely biodiverse ecosystems. 

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3. First global molecular phylogeny and biogeographical analysis of two arachnid orders (Schizomida and Uropygi) supports a tropical Pangean origin and mid‐Cretaceous diversification

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13076  

   Clouse, Ronald M. ; Branstetter, Michael G. ; Buenavente, Perry ; Crowley, Louise M. ; Czekanski‐Moir, Jesse ; General, David Emmanuel M. ; Giribet, Gonzalo ; Harvey, Mark S. ; Janies, Daniel A. ; Mohagan, Alma B. ; et al ( August 2017 , Journal of Biogeography)

   We sought to illuminate the history of the arachnid orders Schizomida and Uropygi, neither of which have previously been subjected to global molecular phylogenetic and biogeographical analyses.

   Specimens used in this study were collected in all major tropical and subtropical areas where they are presently found, including the Americas, Africa, Australia and the Indo‐Pacific region.

   From field‐collected specimens, we sequenced two nuclear and two mitochondrial markers, combined these with publicly available data, and conducted multi‐gene phylogenetic analyses on 240 Schizomida, 24 Uropygi and 12 other arachnid outgroups. Schizomid specimens included one specimen from the small family Protoschizomidae; other schizomid specimens were in Hubbardiidae, subfamily Hubbardiinae, which holds 289 of the order's 305 named species. We inferred ancestral areas using the Dispersal‐Extinction‐Cladogenesis model of range evolution, and we used fossil calibrations to estimate divergence times.

   We recovered monophyletic Schizomida and Uropygi as each other's sister group, forming the clade Thelyphonida, and terminals from the New World were usually positioned as the earliest diverging lineages. The ancestral area for schizomids reconstructed unambiguously to the region comprised of Mexico, Southern California and Florida (the xeric New World subtropics). Optimal trees suggested a single colonization of the Indo‐Pacific in both orders, although this did not receive bootstrap support. Molecular dating gave an Upper Carboniferous origin for each order, and a mid‐Cretaceous expansion of Schizomida, including the origin and initial diversification of those in the Indo‐Pacific.

   Ancestral area reconstructions, molecular dating and fossil evidence all support an Upper Carboniferous, tropical Pangean origin for Thelyphonida, Schizomida and perhaps Uropygi. Much of this region became unsuitable habitat for these arachnids during the breakup of Pangea, but they persisted in the area that is now Meso‐ and South America. From there they then expanded to the Indo‐Pacific, where schizomids today display an idiosyncratic combination of microendemism and long‐range dispersal.

    

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4. Can Geometric Morphometric Analyses of Limb Shape Reveal Ecomorphological Patterns Across the Evolutionary History of Synapsida?

   Lungmus, J. K. ; Angielczyk, K. D. ( April 2019 , Journal of morphology)

   Extant Mammalia are the only living representatives of the larger clade known as Synapsida, which has a continuous fossil record from around 320 million years ago to today. Despite the fact that much of the ecological diversity of mammals has been considered in light of limb morphology, the deep time origin of synapsid limb diversity and its influence on ecological diversity has received less attention. Here, we present shape analyses focusing on the forelimbs of the two earliest synapsid radiations (“pelycosaurs”, and pre-mammaliaforme Therapsida) in comparison to a broad sample of extant Mammalia. Using an expansive geometric morphometric data set, comprised of 384 fossil specimens and 148 extant mammalian specimens, we sought evidence for ecomorphological signals that could provide insight on the ecology of the earliest synapsids. Collecting shape data of humeral and ulnar elements from an extant sample representing multiple known eco morphologies provided the framework for a comparative exploration of extinct ecomorphologies, associated specifically with locomotion. Our results show that distal humeral shape is not informative of broad locomotor ecomorphologies in early fossil Synapsida. In contrast, proximal humeral shape shows a more complex pattern that suggests shape similarity between basal synapsids and members of extant Perissodactyla, and certain highly derived fully fossorial mammals, as just two examples. Overall, however, our findings suggest general shape analyses may have limited utility when analyzing for ecological-signal across deep time. Considering skeletal morphology in a holistic framework that considers unique combinations of shapes, as well as the use of biomechanically focused indices (such are functional proportions), may help to elucidate the more nuanced ways that locomotor ecology influenced limb shape in some of the earliest amniote radiations. 

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5. Hyainailourine and teratodontine cranial material from the late Eocene of Egypt and the application of parsimony and Bayesian methods to the phylogeny and biogeography of Hyaenodonta (Placentalia, Mammalia)

   https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2639  

   Borths, Matthew R. ; Holroyd, Patricia A. ; Seiffert, Erik R. ( November 2016 , PeerJ)

   Hyaenodonta is a diverse, extinct group of carnivorous mammals that included weasel- to rhinoceros-sized species. The oldest-known hyaenodont fossils are from the middle Paleocene of North Africa and the antiquity of the group in Afro-Arabia led to the hypothesis that it originated there and dispersed to Asia, Europe, and North America. Here we describe two new hyaenodont species based on the oldest hyaenodont cranial specimens known from Afro-Arabia. The material was collected from the latest Eocene Locality 41 (L-41, ∼34 Ma) in the Fayum Depression, Egypt.Akhnatenavus nefertiticyonsp. nov. has specialized, hypercarnivorous molars and an elongate cranial vault. InA. nefertiticyonthe tallest, piercing cusp on M¹–M²is the paracone.Brychotherium ephalmosgen. et sp. nov. has more generalized molars that retain the metacone and complex talonids. InB. ephalmosthe tallest, piercing cusp on M¹–M²is the metacone. We incorporate this new material into a series of phylogenetic analyses using a character-taxon matrix that includes novel dental, cranial, and postcranial characters, and samples extensively from the global record of the group. The phylogenetic analysis includes the first application of Bayesian methods to hyaenodont relationships.B. ephalmosis consistently placed within Teratodontinae, an Afro-Arabian clade with several generalist and hypercarnivorous forms, andAkhnatenavusis consistently recovered in Hyainailourinae as part of an Afro-Arabian radiation. The phylogenetic results suggest that hypercarnivory evolved independently three times within Hyaenodonta: in Teratodontinae, in Hyainailourinae, and in Hyaenodontinae. Teratodontines are consistently placed in a close relationship with Hyainailouridae (Hyainailourinae + Apterodontinae) to the exclusion of “proviverrines,” hyaenodontines, and several North American clades, and we propose that the superfamily Hyainailouroidea be used to describe this relationship. Using the topologies recovered from each phylogenetic method, we reconstructed the biogeographic history of Hyaenodonta using parsimony optimization (PO), likelihood optimization (LO), and Bayesian Binary Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to examine support for the Afro-Arabian origin of Hyaenodonta. Across all analyses, we found that Hyaenodonta most likely originated in Europe, rather than Afro-Arabia. The clade is estimated by tip-dating analysis to have undergone a rapid radiation in the Late Cretaceous and Paleocene; a radiation currently not documented by fossil evidence. During the Paleocene, lineages are reconstructed as dispersing to Asia, Afro-Arabia, and North America. The place of origin of Hyainailouroidea is likely Afro-Arabia according to the Bayesian topologies but it is ambiguous using parsimony. All topologies support the constituent clades–Hyainailourinae, Apterodontinae, and Teratodontinae–as Afro-Arabian and tip-dating estimates that each clade is established in Afro-Arabia by the middle Eocene.

    

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