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A new toothless pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota with comments on the Chaoyangopteridae
The Chaoyangopteridae is a clade of azhdarchoid pterosaurs that stands out in China, particularly in the Jehol Biota, as a Cretaceous group of...
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Middle ear innovation in Early Cretaceous eutherian mammals
The middle ear ossicles in modern mammals are repurposed from postdentary bones in non-mammalian cynodonts. Recent discoveries by palaeontological...
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Intra-gastric phytoliths provide evidence for folivory in basal avialans of the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota
Angiosperms became the dominant plant group in early to middle Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems, coincident with the timing of the earliest pulse of...
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Powered flight in hatchling pterosaurs: evidence from wing form and bone strength
Competing views exist on the behaviour and lifestyle of pterosaurs during the earliest phases of life. A ‘flap-early’ model proposes that hatchlings...
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A new wing skeleton of the Jehol tapejarid Sinopterus and its implications for ontogeny and paleoecology of the Tapejaridae
The tapejarid pterosaurs flourished in the Jehol Biota with an abundance of immature individuals and a rarity of individuals at skeletal maturity....
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Fossoriality and evolutionary development in two Cretaceous mammaliamorphs
Mammaliamorpha comprises the last common ancestor of Tritylodontidae and Mammalia plus all its descendants
1 . Tritylodontids are nonmammaliaform...
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Author Correction: An Early Cretaceous pterosaur with an unusual mandibular crest from China and a potential novel feeding strategy
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
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Medullary bone in an Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird and discussion regarding its identification in fossils
Medullary bone is an ephemeral type of bone tissue, today found only in sexually mature female birds, that provides a calcium reservoir for eggshell...
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Cretaceous bird with dinosaur skull sheds light on avian cranial evolution
The transformation of the bird skull from an ancestral akinetic, heavy, and toothed dinosaurian morphology to a highly derived, lightweight,...
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On a new crested pterodactyloid from the Early Cretaceous of the Iberian Peninsula and the radiation of the clade Anhangueria
The pterosaur record from the Iberian Peninsula is mostly scarce and undefined, but in the last few years some new taxa have been described from...
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Late Cretaceous neornithine from Europe illuminates the origins of crown birds
Our understanding of the earliest stages of crown bird evolution is hindered by an exceedingly sparse avian fossil record from the Mesozoic era. The...
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Cretaceous fossil reveals a new pattern in mammalian middle ear evolution
The evolution of the mammalian middle ear is thought to provide an example of ‘recapitulation’—the theory that the present embryological development...
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A new transitional therizinosaurian theropod from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of China
Therizinosaurian theropods evolved many highly specialized osteological features in association with their bulky proportions, which were unusual in...
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The earliest evidence for a supraorbital salt gland in dinosaurs in new Early Cretaceous ornithurines
Supraorbital fossae occur when salt glands are well developed, a condition most pronounced in marine and desert-dwelling taxa in which salt...
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A bizarre Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird with unique crural feathers and an ornithuromorph plough-shaped pygostyle
Enantiornithes are the most successful clade of Mesozoic birds. Here, we describe a new enantiornithine bird, Cruralispennia multidonta gen. et sp....
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Lower Cretaceous fossils from China shed light on the ancestral body plan of crown softshell turtles (Trionychidae, Cryptodira)
Pan-trionychids or softshell turtles are a highly specialized and widespread extant group of aquatic taxa with an evolutionary history that goes back...
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A sinemydid turtle from the Jehol Biota provides insights into the basal divergence of crown turtles
Morphological phylogenies stand in a major conflict with molecular hypotheses regarding the phylogeny of Cryptodira, the most diverse and widely...
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A new basal bird from China with implications for morphological diversity in early birds
The Chinese Lower Cretaceous Jehol Group is the second oldest fossil bird-bearing deposit, only surpassed by Archaeopteryx from the German Upper...
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An Early Cretaceous pterosaur with an unusual mandibular crest from China and a potential novel feeding strategy
The Aptian Jiufotang Formation of northeast China is a Konservat Lagerstätte particularly rich in pterosaurs, notably azhdarchoids. Here we describe...
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The oldest record of ornithuromorpha from the early cretaceous of China
Ornithuromorpha is the most inclusive clade containing extant birds but not the Mesozoic Enantiornithes. The early evolutionary history of this avian...
