PeerJ – Paleontology and Evolutionary Science section

6 July 2018

Fossil eggshell cuticle elucidates dinosaur nesting ecology

Tzu-Ruei Yang, Ying-Hsuan Chen, Jasmina Wiemann, Beate Spiering, P. Martin Sander

Editor rating: 7 / 10

Graciela Piñeiro –– This is an important contribution to the dinosaur reproductive behavior, and offers a pormenorized study of the evidence to suggest the presence of a cuticle-like layer in oviraptorid and alvarezsaurid dinosaur eggs.

20 June 2018

Cranial morphology of Sinovenator changii (Theropoda: Troodontidae) on the new material from the Yixian Formation of western Liaoning, China

Editor rating: 7 / 10

Hans-Dieter Sues –– Important study on troodontid cranial structure.

8 June 2018

Gorgonopsian therapsids (Nochnitsa gen. nov. and Viatkogorgon) from the Permian Kotelnich locality of Russia

Editor rating: 7 / 10

Mark Young –– Gorgonopsians are an unstudied clade, which this paper helps to begin to rectify.

1 June 2018

Cranial anatomy of Bellusaurus sui (Dinosauria: Eusauropoda) from the Middle-Late Jurassic Shishugou Formation of northwest China and a review of sauropod cranial ontogeny

Editor rating: 8 / 10

Andrew Farke –– Detailed description of an important taxon for sauropod workers.

31 May 2018

Assessing canalisation of intraspecific variation on a macroevolutionary scale: the case of crinoid arms through the Phanerozoic

Editor rating: 8 / 10

Philip Cox –– This is a thorough study on an extensive dataset that will provide a model for other such macroevolutionary investigations.

25 May 2018

Fingerprinting snakes: paleontological and paleoecological implications of zygantral growth rings in Serpentes

Editor rating: 8 / 10

Andrew Farke –– This study presents data applicable for many paleontologists in trying to establish life history information for snakes extant and extinct.

16 April 2018

A new lineage of Cretaceous jewel wasps (Chalcidoidea: Diversinitidae)

Editor rating: 7 / 10

Kenneth De Baets –– Oldest best-preserved representatives of chalcid wasps which is relevant for entomologists, evolutionary biologist and paleontologists. The authors run a phylogenetic analysis to place them among their extant relatives.

6 April 2018

Reinvestigating an enigmatic Late Cretaceous monocot: morphology, taxonomy, and biogeography of Viracarpon

Section Editor rating: 8 / 10

Andrew Farke –– Excellent imagery and descriptions of an important taxon.

6 April 2018

Including autapomorphies is important for paleontological tip-dating with clocklike data, but not with non-clock data

Editor rating: 7 / 10

Laura Wilson –– Evaluates the impact of autapomorphies on the behaviour of tip-dating methods. The results are relevant for all future studies that employ tip-dating analyses.

16 March 2018

Evolutionary persistence in Gunnera and the contribution of southern plant groups to the tropical Andes biodiversity hotspot

Editor rating: 9 / 10

Luis Eguiarte –– Gunnera is a genus of plants that have fascinated scientist for a long time, in particular for the very large leaves of some species and because its symbiotic relationship with the nitrogen fixing cyanobacteria Nostoc. For a many years, some botanists suspected it to be a very old, primitive genus, perhaps basal in the phylogeny of the Angiosperms. While latter molecular phylogenies did not support this position, this paper shows that indeed Gunnera is an old genus, with a complex evolutionary and phylogeographic history, and a recent radiation in the Andes. All these new results are relevant for understanding why the Neotropics have so many plant species, more than any other similar region in the planet.

Paleontology and Evolutionary Science

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Paleontology and Evolutionary Science