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Here the authors provide new radiocarbon, U-series, and OSL dates for Homo sapiens fossils from Tongtianyan cave, southern China, placing them at 33-23 thousand years ago and indicating widespread presence of Homo sapiens across eastern Asia in the Late Pleistocene.

This study provides evidence for long-term effects of volcanic emissions of large quantities of gaseous mercury (Hg) and plant mutagenesis by recording high abundances of malformed fern spores across the Triassic-Jurassic boundary and Early Jurassic.

A new Lagerstätte from Montagne Noire, southern France, preserves a rare example of an Early Ordovician polar ecosystem.

Bergmann’s Rule predicts larger body sizes in colder climates. Here, the authors examine extinct and extant dinosaurs (birds) and mammaliaforms, finding no evidence of body size variation with latitude in any group, but a small variation with temperature in extant birds.

A new morganucodontan-like species from the Jurassic in China shows evidence of a loss of load-bearing function in the articular–quadrate jaw joint, which probably had a role in the evolution of the mammalian middle ear.

A newly described fossil mammaliaform from the Jurassic period of China shows that the shuotheriids are allied to the docodonts, and provides details on the processes of tooth evolution in early mammals.

Ancient proteins carry genetic information from fossils that are too old or degraded for ancient DNA recovery. This protocol describes the extraction and tandem mass spectrometry sequencing of million-year-old dental enamel proteins for phylogenetic inference.

The archaeological site Shinfa-Metema 1 in the lowlands of northwest Ethiopia provides early evidence of intensive riverine-based foraging aided by the likely adoption of the bow and arrow.

The origin and early evolution of large scales in bony fishes and small scales in cartilaginous fishes are unclear. Here, the authors report a 425-million-year-old fish, Entelognathus, with a mosaic of scale and fin spine characters.

In this Perspective, the authors discuss current knowledge of deep-time protein preservation and how the chemical changes undergone by proteins affect taphonomic and palaeoproteomic analyses.

Protomelission-like macrofossils from the Xiaoshiba Lagerstätte show features characteristic of dasycladalean green alga, suggesting that Protomelission is unlikely to be an early bryozoan.

The authors report three palaeomagnetic poles from the North China craton and document a large round-trip true polar wander oscillation during 155−141 Ma that may have affected biotic evolution in East Asia and global extinction and endemism.

The evolutionary origin of the domestic dog is uncertain. Here, the authors sequence the whole genomes of 9 extinct Japanese wolves and 11 modern Japanese dogs, applying a phylogenetic analysis to show that dogs may have originated in East Asia from a common ancestor with the Japanese wolf.

Detailed structural analysis of Palaeospondylus gunni from the Middle Devonian period shows strong resemblance to Eusthenopteron and Panderichthys, indicating that it was a sarcopterygian and most probably a stem-tetrapod.

Criteria for evaluating joint articulation in vertebrates are lacking. Here, the authors propose an approach for combining measurements of 3D articular overlap, symmetry, and congruence into a single metric, and apply this to examine the walking stride of Deinonychus antirrhopus.

Numerous feathered dinosaurs and early birds have been discovered from the Jurassic and Cretaceous, but the early evolution of feather-feeding insects is not clear. Here, Gao et al. describe a new family of ectoparasitic insects from 10 specimens found associated with feathers in mid-Cretaceous amber.

Vermiform microstructure in microbial reefs dating to approximately 890 million years ago resembles the body fossils of Phanerozoic demosponges, and may represent the earliest known physical evidence of animals.

A well-preserved partial skeleton (Upper Triassic, Brazil) of the new lagerpetid Venetoraptor gassenae gen. et sp. nov. offers a more comprehensive look into the skull and ecology of dinosaur and pterosaur precursors.

Fish production is predicted to decrease with anthropogenic global warming. Here the authors analyse fish fossil assemblages from 62–46 My old deep-sea sediments and instead find a positive correlation between fish production and ocean temperature over geological timescales, which a data-constrained model explains in terms of trophic transfer efficiency and primary production.

Phylogenetic statistical analyses, biophysical models and information from the fossil record show that an evolutionary signal of natural selection acted to increase the flight efficiency of pterosaurs over millions of years.

The authors explore dental development in a stem-chondrichthyan ischnacanthid acanthodian to inform our understanding of the ancestral gnathostome dental condition, finding that although dermal oral tubercles are a conserved feature of early gnathostomes, the complex cyclic shedding dentitions and whorls appear to have evolved multiple times.

Analysis of planktic foraminifera dynamics in the wake of the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction shows that increases in morphologic complexity preceded changes in species diversity and that the construction of new morphospace constrained diversification speed following the extinction event.

Molecular analyses of newly discovered, embryo-bearing ornithischian and sauropod dinosaur eggs suggest that the ancestral dinosaur egg was soft-shelled, and that hard-shelled eggs evolved independently at least three times in the major dinosaur lineages.

Complex macroscopic organisms are first found in the Ediacaran period, but their ecology during this time is not well understood. Here, Bobrovskiy et al. analyse biomarkers from Ediacaran sediments hosting macrofossils and find evidence for abundant algal food sources available for these organisms.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations remained below 840 parts per million and polar regions were glaciated throughout much of the Early Cretaceous except during episodic volcanism, according to an analysis of stable isotope composition of plants and biogenic carbonate data.

Agarics (gilled mushrooms) are rarely preserved as fossils, which has obscured their evolutionary history. Here, the authors describe new forms of agarics as well as new species of rove beetles with morphological specializations for mushroom feeding discovered in 99-million-year-old Burmese amber.

Interactions with angiosperms are thought to have had a significant impact on insect diversification. Here, the authors use a Bayesian process-based approach to find that angiosperm radiation played a dual role that changed through time, mitigating insect extinction in the Cretaceous and promoting insect origination in the Cenozoic.

Soft tissues are rarely preserved in the fossil record; therefore, body shape of extinct vertebrates is usually inferred indirectly. Here, the authors use laser-stimulated fluorescence of fossils to detect and reconstruct the body outline of the paravian dinosaurAnchiornisfrom the Late Jurassic.

The nature of aspidin, the most primitive bone-like tissue, is controversial. Here, the authors show that aspidin is acellular dermal bone, suggesting that early vertebrates possessed a full repertoire of skeletal tissue types.

Although live birth evolved repeatedly in other clades, it has not been found in archosauromorphs, the group including modern birds and crocodilians. Here, the authors describe a fossilized pregnantDinocephalosaurusfrom ∼245 million years ago, providing evidence of live birth in archosauromorphs.

Morphological studies and phylogenetic analyses based on the newly discovered Early Cretaceous eutherian mammal Ambolestes zhoui show that the oldest purported metatherian Sinodelphys is instead a eutherian.

Large-scale geographic heterogeneity in extinction and recovery across the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, as indicated by preserved insect-damage of fossil leaves in Patagonia and the Western Interior of North America.

It is unclear when multicellular animals first invaded the microscopic ecological niche between sediment grains given the absence of such animals from the fossil record. Microscopic Loriciferans are described from the Cambrian period, showing an early occupation of this important niche.

Many insects mimic plants in order to avoid detection by predators. Here, Garrouste and colleagues describe a katydid fossil that extends the record of leaf mimicry to the Middle Permian, more than 100 million years earlier than previously known fossil specimens of plant mimicry.

Molecular clock analyses calibrated with fossil material reveal a new timescale of early life.

The common ancestor of all living arthropods had biramous postantennal appendages, with an endopodite and exopodite branching off the limb base. This study uses microtomographic imaging of the Cambrian arthropod Leanchoilia to reveal a previously undetected exite at the base of most appendages, suggesting a deeper origin for exites in arthropod phylogeny.

The phylogenetic relationship among different arthropod groups remains unclear. Here Legg et al. present a refined Arthropoda phylogeny based on extinct and extant data, in which Crustacea is paraphyletic with respect to Hexapoda.

Troodontid dinosaurs share a close ancestry with birds and were distributed widely across the northern hemisphere before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. Goswami et al. report the discovery in South India of the first Gondwanan troodontid, extending their geographic range by nearly 10,000 km.

True crabs are successful crustaceans with a life history that includes two specialized larval forms, zoea and megalopa. Here, the authors report a 150 million-years-old fossil megalopa with a very modern morphology, suggesting that modern larval morphologies were established early on.

An elongate body plan has evolved multiple times through the addition of more vertebras or an increase in their length. In this study, Maxwell et al. describe a new mechanism of body elongation in a saurichthyid: doubling the number of dorsal arches without an increase in the number of myomeres.

The origin of Cnidaria—coral and jellyfish—is still unsolved in the basal metazoan phylogeny. Here, a Cambrian fossil of a stem-group cnidarian,Cambroctoconus orientalisgen. et sp. nov., is found to bear octoradial symmetry, but no jelly-like mesenchyme, suggesting this evolved after octoradial symmetry.

Dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago due to volcanism and a bolide impact, but whether their numbers were already declining is still not clear. This study calculates the morphological disparity of seven dinosaur subgroups, showing that at least some groups were in a long-term decline before the extinction.

The rise of open-habitat ecosystems in southern South America is thought to have occurred with the spread of hypsodont mammals 26 million years ago. In this study, the fossil record of plants preserved in Patagonia suggests that open-habitat ecosystems emerged 15 million years later than previously assumed.