Manifera talaris, a voltzian conifer from the late early to middle Permian (ca. 270 Ma) of Texas, is the earliest known conifer to produce winged seeds indicative of autorotating flight. In contrast to autorotating seeds and fruits of extant plants, the ones of M. talaris are exceptional in that they have variable morphology. They bore two wings that produced a range of wing configurations, from seeds with two equal-sized wings to single-winged specimens, via various stages of underdevelopment of one of the wings. To examine the effects of various seed morphologies on aerodynamics and dispersal potential, we studied the flight performance of paper models of three morphotypes: symmetric double-winged, asymmetric double-winged, and single-winged. Using a high-speed camera we identified the mode of descent (plummeting, gliding, autorotation) and quantified descent speed, autorotation frequency, and other flight characteristics. To validate such modeling as an inferential tool, we compared descent of extant analogues (kauri; Agathis australis) with descent of similarly constructed seed models. All three seed morphotypes exhibited autorotating flight behavior. However, double-winged seeds, especially symmetric ones, failed to initiate slow autorotative descent more frequently than single-winged seeds. Even when autorotating, symmetric double-winged seeds descend faster than asymmetric double-winged ones, and descent is roughly twice as fast compared to single-winged seeds. Moreover, the relative advantage that (effectively) single-winged seeds have in slowing descent during autorotation becomes larger as seed weight increases. Hence, the range in seed wing configurations in M. talaris produced a wide variation in potential dispersal capacity. Overall, our results indicate that the evolutionarily novel autorotating winged seeds must have improved conifer seed dispersal, in a time when animal vectors for dispersion were virtually absent. Because of the range in wing configuration, the early evolution of autorotative flight in conifers was a functionally imperfect one, which provides us insight into the evolutionary developmental biology of autorotative seeds in conifers.

Ecological niche modeling (ENM) is a quantitative approach to predict species’ abiotic requirements. It is a correlative technique, requiring geographically explicit information on species occurrences and the suites of environmental conditions experienced at each occurrence point. The output of these models is a set of environmental suitability rules that can be projected geographically and through time to test biogeographic, ecologic, and evolutionary hypotheses. Although developed by biologists and used extensively in the modern, ENM is in its early stages of application to the deep-time fossil record (hence PaleoENM). In part its limited use in the fossil record thus far reflects the methodological challenge of constructing paleoenvironmental layers needed for PaleoENM analysis, whereas in the modern these layers are available from large public databases (e.g., WorldClim). This paper provides a contextual and methodological framework for appropriately applying PaleoENM, including best practices for developing species occurrence and paleoenvironmental data sets for PaleoENM analyses.

Macroevolutionary and macroecological studies must account for biases in the fossil record, especially when questions concern the relative abundance and diversity of taxa that differ in preservation and sampling potential. Using Cenozoic marine mollusks from a temperate setting (New Zealand), we find that much of the long-term temporal variation in gastropod versus bivalve occurrences is correlated with the stage-level sampling probabilities of aragonitic versus calcitic taxa. Average sampling probabilities are higher for calcitic species, but this contrast is time-varying in a predictable way, being concentrated in stages with widespread carbonate deposition.

To understand these results fully, we link them with analyses at the level of individual point occurrences. Doing so reveals that aragonite bias is effectively absent in terrigenous clastic sediments. In limestones, by contrast, calcitic species have at least twice the odds of sampling as aragonitic species. This result is most pronounced during times of widespread carbonate deposition, where the difference in the per-collection odds of sampling species is a factor of eight. During carbonate-rich intervals, calcitic taxa also have higher odds of sampling in clastics. At first glance this result may suggest simple preservational bias against aragonite. However, comparing relative odds of aragonitic versus calcitic sampling with absolute sampling rates shows that the positive calcite bias during carbonate-rich times reflects higher than average occurrence rates for calcitic taxa (rather than lower rates for aragonitic taxa) and that the negative aragonite bias in limestones reflects lower than average occurrence rates for aragonitic taxa (rather than higher rates for calcitic taxa).

Our results therefore indicate a time-varying interplay of two main factors: (1) taphonomic loss of aragonitic species in carbonate sediments, with no substantial bias in terrigenous clastics; and (2) an ecological preference of calcitic taxa for environments characteristic of periods with pervasive carbonate deposition, irrespective of lithology per se.

The Guadalupian (middle Permian) extinction may have triggered substantial ecological restructuring in level-bottom communities, such as turnover in dominant brachiopod genera or a shift from abundant brachiopods to mollusks, despite comparatively minor taxonomic losses. However, ecological changes in relative abundance have been inferred from limited data; as a result, constraints on important shifts like the brachiopod-mollusk transition are imprecise. Here, I reevaluate the magnitude of ecological shifts during the Guadalupian–Lopingian (G-L) interval by supplementing previous census counts of silicified assemblages with counts from non-silicified assemblages and global occurrence data, both sourced from the Paleobiology Database. Brachiopod occurrences are consistent with more pronounced faunal composition changes from the Guadalupian to Lopingian than among stages within those intervals, but only in Iran and South China, and not in Pakistan or a Tethys-wide data set. In Iran and South China, Bray-Curtis dissimilarity values comparing occurrence frequencies between adjacent stages were elevated across the G-L transition, although other intervals exhibited similarly large shifts. However, genus occurrence frequencies were less strongly correlated or were anti-correlated across the G-L transition, suggesting moderate faunal turnover among dominant brachiopod genera. In contrast to previous inferences from silicified faunas, abundances of brachiopods, bivalves, and gastropods remained consistent from the Guadalupian to Lopingian in non-silicified local counts and global occurrences, implying that the brachiopod-mollusk shift did not occur until the end-Permian extinction. Ecological and taxonomic consequences were both minor in level-bottom settings, suggesting that severe environmental perturbations may not be necessary to explain biotic changes during the Guadalupian-Lopingian transition.

Ecomorphological diversity of Mesozoic mammals was presumably constrained by selective pressures imposed by contemporary vertebrates. In accordance, Mesozoic mammals for a long time had been viewed as generalized, terrestrial, small-bodied forms with limited locomotor specializations. Recent discoveries of Mesozoic mammal skeletons with distinctive postcranial morphologies have challenged this hypothesis. However, ecomorphological analyses of these new postcrania have focused on a single taxon, a limited region of the skeleton, or have been largely qualitative.

For more comprehensive locomotor inference in Mesozoic mammals, we applied multivariate analyses to a morphometric data set of extant small-bodied mammals. We used 30 osteological indices derived from linear measurements of appendicular skeletons of 107 extant taxa that sample 15 orders and eight locomotor modes. Canonical variate analyses show that extant small-bodied mammals of different locomotor modes have detectable and predictable morphologies. The resulting morphospace occupation reveals a morphofunctional continuum that extends from terrestrial to scansorial, arboreal, and gliding modes, reflecting an increasingly slender postcranial skeleton with longer limb output levers adapted for speed and agility, and extends from terrestrial to semiaquatic/semifossorial and fossorial modes, reflecting an increasingly robust postcranial skeleton with shorter limb output levers adapted for powerful, propulsive strokes. We used this morphometric data set to predict locomotor mode in ten Mesozoic mammals within the Docodonta, Multituberculata, Eutriconodonta, “Symmetrodonta,” and Eutheria. Our results indicate that these fossil taxa represent five of eight locomotor modes used to classify extant taxa in this study, in some cases confirming and in other cases differing from prior ecomorphological assessments. Together with previous locomotor inferences of 19 additional taxa, these results show that by the Late Jurassic mammals had diversified into all but the saltatorial and active flight locomotor modes, and that this diversification was greatest in the Eutriconodonta and Multituberculata, although sampling of postcranial skeletons remains uneven across taxa and through time.

The chambered shell of modern cephalopods functions as a buoyancy apparatus, allowing the animal to enter the water column without expending a large amount of energy to overcome its own weight. Indeed, the chambered shell is largely considered a key adaptation that allowed the earliest cephalopods to leave the ocean floor and enter the water column. It has been argued by some, however, that the iconic chambered shell of Paleozoic and Mesozoic ammonoids did not provide a sufficiently buoyant force to compensate for the weight of the entire animal, thus restricting ammonoids to a largely benthic lifestyle reminiscent of some octopods. Here we develop a technique using high-resolution computed tomography to quantify the buoyant properties of chambered shells without reducing the shell to ideal spirals or eliminating inherent biological variability by using mathematical models that characterize past work in this area. This technique has been tested on Nautilus pompilius and is now extended to the extant deep-sea squid Spirula spirula and the Jurassic ammonite Cadoceras sp. hatchling. Cadoceras is found to have possessed near-neutral to positive buoyancy if hatched when the shell possessed between three and five chambers. However, we show that the animal could also overcome degrees of negative buoyancy through swimming, similar to the paralarvae of modern squids. These calculations challenge past inferences of benthic life habits based solely on calculations of negative buoyancy. The calculated buoyancy of Cadoceras supports the possibility of planktonic dispersal of ammonite hatchlings. This information is essential to understanding ammonoid ecology as well as biotic interactions and has implications for the interpretation of geochemical data gained from the isotopic analysis of the shell.

The geographic distribution of brachiopod genus occurrences over the Phanerozoic shows that secular declines in origination and extinction rates were paralleled by increases in invasion and extirpation rates. Origination and extinction rates declined in two phases, the first from the Cambrian to latest Permian Periods and the second from the latest Permian Period to the present, which were accompanied by concomitant increases in invasion and extirpation rates. In addition to the temporal correlation, an inverse correlation was also weakly evident among time-averaged latitudinal gradients of rates. Compared with faunas at higher latitudes, low-latitude faunas experienced higher origination and extinction rates, and lower invasion and extirpation rates. We suggest that progressive increases in migration ability lowered origination and extinction rates because species that were better equipped to track a preferred habitat, for example, by the ability to disperse larvae over large distances, were less likely to evolve or become extinct in response to local environmental changes. The two phases were separated by the end-Permian mass extinction, which reset to high levels the origination and extinction rates of a taxonomically and ecologically altered global brachiopod fauna. Our data also allow us to quantify the relative contributions of origination, extinction, invasion, and extirpation to regional diversity (quantified as 10° latitudinal zones) more generally. Overall, invasion and extirpation explained slightly more variation in diversity than in situ origination and extinction. The four variables usually occurred in combinations that maintained rather than altered the shape of the latitudinal diversity gradient. For most of the Phanerozoic Eon, the gradient was not the product of continuous renewal, but rather existed as a holdover from a previous interval.

Many marine benthic metazoans must stabilize themselves upon the seafloor for survival, and as a result their morphologies are controlled in part by local substrate conditions. The Agronomic Revolution (AR), spurred by increasing vertical bioturbation during the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition, permanently altered the nature of shallow marine substrate conditions and led to a major shift in adaptive strategies among benthic metazoans. These ecological and evolutionary changes, known as the Cambrian Substrate Revolution (CSR), are generally understood from observations of benthic metazoan fossils across the Ediacaran/Cambrian boundary, but the timing and geographic extent of this transition are less well known. This analysis attempts to constrain the temporal and spatial pattern of the AR and CSR by performing a global-scale paleoecological analysis of the adaptive strategies of benthic fauna living during the Cambrian. This analysis focused on Burgess Shale-type (BST) faunas because of their exceptional preservation, and was conducted through direct observation of fossil specimens, analysis of data compiled from the Paleobiology Database, and literature review. From these analyses, faunal groups are assigned a metric, the Substrate Adaptability Index (SAI), that relates the overall affinity the fauna demonstrates toward either Proterozoic-style (SAI=0) or Phanerozoic-style (SAI=1) substrate conditions. The results of this analysis demonstrate that most early and middle Cambrian faunas were mixtures of Phanerozoic- and Proterozoic-style adaptive strategists, suggesting that Proterozoic-style substrates were still influential in controlling adaptive strategies in marine environments until at least that time. This is further supported by ichnofabric analysis of many of these localities, where overall bioturbation levels are exceedingly low, indicating a lack of mixed-layer development and the prevalence of firm Proterozoic-style substrates well into the Cambrian.

Evolutionary inferences from fossil data often require accurately reconstructing differences in richness and morphological disparity between fossil sites across space and time. Biases such as sampling and rock availability are commonly accounted for in large-scale studies; however, preservation bias is usually dealt with only in smaller, more focused studies. Birds represent a diverse, but taphonomically fragile, group commonly used to infer environmental conditions in recent (Pleistocene and later) fossil assemblages, and their relative scarcity in the fossil record has led to controversy over the timing of their radiation. Here, I use simulations to show how even weak taphonomic biases can distort estimates of richness, and render variance sensitive to sample size. I then apply an ecology-based filtering model to recent bird assemblages to quantify the distortion induced by taphonomy. Certain deposit types, such as caves, show less evidence of taphonomic distortion than others, such as fluvial and lacustrine deposits. Archaeological middens unsurprisingly show some of the strongest evidence for taphonomic bias, and they should be avoided when reconstructing Pleistocene and early Holocene environments. Further, these results support previously suggested methods for detecting fossil assemblages that are relatively faithfully preserved (e.g., presence of difficult-to-preserve taxa), and I use these results to recommend that future large-scale studies include facies diversity along with metrics such as rock volume, or compare only sites with similar taphonomic histories.