Biodiversity today has the unusual property that 85% of plant and animal species live on
land rather than in the sea, and half of these live in tropical rainforests. An explosive boost to …

The foundations of several disciplines can be expressed as simple quantitative laws, for
example, Newton's laws or the laws of thermodynamics. Here I present five laws derived …

The origin and expansion of biological diversity is regulated by both developmental
trajectories, and limits on available ecological niches,,,,. As lineages diversify, an early and …

Vertebrate palaeontology is a lively field, with new discoveries reported every week... and
not only dinosaurs! This new edition reflects the international scope of vertebrate …

Uncertainties in the phylogeny of birds (Avialae) and their closest relatives have impeded
deeper understanding of early theropod flight. To help address this, we produced an …

The increased capacity of DNA sequencing has significantly advanced our understanding of
the phylogeny of birds and the proximate and ultimate mechanisms molding their genomic …

Ammonites underwent an evolutionary diversification after the mass extinction of the end
Triassic induced by the formation of a Large Igneous province (LIP), and this group provides …

Recent palaeontological data and novel physiological hypotheses now allow a timescaled
reconstruction of the evolution of endothermy in birds and mammals. A three‐phase iterative …

As a fundamental ecological aspect of most organisms, locomotor function significantly
constrains morphology. At the same time, the evolution of novel locomotor abilities has …

Remarkably well-preserved soft tissues in Mesozoic fossils have yielded substantial insights
into the evolution of feathers 1. New evidence of branched feathers in pterosaurs suggests …