Worldwide, silicified woods are found in many geological formations. Significantly, the organic materials of wood are no longer dominant; almost all wood fossils have been mineralized into inorganic silica materials. These unique geological processes must be understood to develop better understanding on organic material fossilization, particularly in the micron scale. Therefore, our aim was to characterize the composition of silicified wood using comprehensive microanalysis. The methods utilized were XRF, ICP-MS, XRD, FTIR, and FE-EPMA. Specimens are from Jasinga, West Java, Indonesia. The results showed that wood silicification was controlled by the infiltration of silica from the host rock into the spaces of the wood structure. In Jasinga, they are controlled by Pliocene tuffaceous sedimentary rocks. The ratio of silica phases revealed a trend in the degree of silicification. Besides silica, the distribution of trace elements also demonstrates the geochemical interaction between the wood fossil and host rock. Wood fossils are affected by the gradual replacement of organic carbon-based materials with silica through silicification. Silica enrichment occurs in the internal of wood, facilitates permineralization and recrystallization. Silica replaces organic material and preserves the wood structures. The microanalytical approach provides comprehensive perspectives on wood petrification, leads to better insights for paleontological studies.

Artificial intelligence tools are new in taphonomy and are growing fast. They are being used mainly to investigate bone surface marks. In order to investigate this subject, a bibliometric study was made to understand the growing rate of this intersectional field, the future, and gaps in the field until now. From Scopus and Google Scholar metadata, graphs were made to describe the data, and inferential statistics were made by regression with the Ordinary Least Squares method. Exploratory analysis with word clouds, topic modeling, and natural language processing with Latent Dirichlet Allocation as a method were also made using the entire corpus from the papers. From the first register until 2023, we found eight articles in Scopus and 32 in Google Scholar; the majority of the studies and the most cited were from Spain. The studies are growing fast from 2016 to 2018, and the regression shows that growth can be maintained in the coming years. Exploratory analysis shows the most frequent words are marks, models, data, and bone. Topic modeling shows that the studies are highly concentrated on similar problems and the tools to solve them, revealing that there is much more to explore with computational tools in taphonomy and paleontology as well.

Fluid dynamics modeling of an Ediacaran ecosystem illustrates an important positive feedback loop between early multicellular organisms and environmental water flow. Early communities thus helped to chemically shape new environments where oxygen-dependent organisms could thrive.

The predation-driven Mesozoic marine revolution (MMR) is believed to have induced a dramatic change in the bathymetric distribution of many shallow marine invertebrates since the late Mesozoic. For instance, stalked crinoids - isocrinids (Isocrinida) have undergone a striking decline in shallow-sea environments and today they are restricted to deep-sea settings (below 100 m depth). However, the timing and synchronicity of this shift are a matter of debate. A delayed onset of MMR and/or shifts to a retrograde, low-predation community structure during the Paleogene in the Southern Ocean were invoked. In particular, recent data from the Southern Hemisphere suggest that the environmental restriction of isocrinids to the deep-sea settings may have occurred at the end of the Eocene around Antarctica and Australia, and later in the early Miocene in New Zealand. Here, we report the anomalous occurrence of the isocrinids in shallow nearshore marine facies from the middle Miocene of Poland (Northern Hemisphere, Central Paratethys). Thus, globally, this is the youngest record of shallow-sea stalked crinoids. This finding suggests that some relict stalked crinoids may have been able to live in the shallow-water environments by the middle Miocene, and further confirms that the depth restriction of isocrinids to offshore environments was not synchronous on a global scale.

Most described Mesozoic ants belong to stem groups that existed only during the Cretaceous period. Previously, the earliest known crown ants were dated to the Turonian (Late Cretaceous, ca. 94-90 million years ago (Ma)) deposits found in the USA, Kazakhstan, and Botswana. However, the recent discovery of an alate male ant in Kachin amber from the earliest Cenomanian (ca. 99 Ma), representing a new genus and species, Antiquiformica alata, revises the narrative on ant diversification. Antiquiformica can be distinctly differentiated from all known male stem ants by its geniculate antennae with elongated scape, extending far beyond the occipital margin of the head and half the length of the funiculus, as well as its partly reduced forewing venation. Furthermore, the combination of a one-segmented waist with a well-developed node, elongated scape extending beyond the occipital margin, and reduced forewing venation, particularly the completely reduced m-cu and rs-m crossveins and absence of rm and mcu closed cells, firmly places the fossil within the extant subfamily Formicinae. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) confirmed that the amber containing Antiquiformica alata originated from the Kachin mines in Myanmar. This discovery significantly revises our understanding of the early evolution of Formicinae. The presence of Antiquiformica in Cenomanian amber indicates that the subfamily Formicinae emerged at least by the start of the Late Cretaceous, with crown ants likely originating earlier during the earliest Cretaceous or possibly the Late Jurassic, although paleontological evidence is lacking to support the latter hypothesis.
大多数被描述的中生代蚂蚁属于仅生存在白垩纪的基干类群。目前已知最古老的冠群蚂蚁发现于美国、哈萨克斯坦和博茨瓦纳的土仑阶沉积中（晚白垩纪，约94–90 Ma）。然而，在克钦琥珀中发现的一个森诺曼阶早期的有翅雄蚁新种（约99 Ma）——翼古老蚁（ Antiquiformica alata）改变了对蚂蚁类群分化的认识。古老蚁属（ Antiquiformica）与所有已知的雄性蚂蚁明显不同：触角呈膝状；柄节较长，延伸远超过后头边缘，长度约为鞭小节的一半；前翅翅脉部分减少。此外，古老蚁属（ Antiquiformica）具有一个发育良好的腹结节、延伸超过后头边缘的细长柄节、简化的前翅翅脉，尤其是前翅横脉m-cu和rs-m完全消失、翅室rm和mcu不闭合，这些特征都表明翼古老蚁属于现存的蚁亚科。傅里叶红外光谱（FTIR）结果表明这件琥珀来自缅甸克钦矿区。新化石的发现极大地改变了我们对蚁亚科早期演化的认识。在克钦琥珀（森诺曼阶）中发现的古老蚁属（ Antiquiformica）证实蚁亚科至少在晚白垩的早期就已经出现，而冠群蚂蚁出现时间肯定更早。冠群蚂蚁可能起源于白垩纪早期甚至侏罗纪晚期，尽管这一假设还未得到古生物学证据的支持。.

The drivers of Ediacaran-Cambrian metazoan radiations remain unclear, as does the fidelity of the record. We use a global age framework [580-510 million years (Ma) ago] to estimate changes in marine sedimentary rock volume and area, reconstructed biodiversity (mean genus richness), and sampling intensity, integrated with carbonate carbon isotopes (δ13Ccarb) and global redox data [carbonate Uranium isotopes (δ238Ucarb)]. Sampling intensity correlates with overall mean reconstructed biodiversity >535 Ma ago, while second-order (~10-80 Ma) global transgressive-regressive cycles controlled the distribution of different marine sedimentary rocks. The temporal distribution of the Avalon assemblage is partly controlled by the temporally and spatially limited record of deep-marine siliciclastic rocks. Each successive rise of metazoan morphogroups that define the Avalon, White Sea, and Cambrian assemblages appears to coincide with global shallow marine oxygenation events at δ13Ccarb maxima, which precede major sea level transgressions. While the record of biodiversity is biased, early metazoan radiations and oxygenation events are linked to major sea level cycles.

The Emu Bay Shale (EBS) of South Australia is anomalous among Cambrian Lagerstätten because it captures anatomical information that is rare in Burgess Shale-type fossils, and because of its inferred nearshore setting, the nature of which has remained controversial. Intensive study, combining outcrop and borehole data with a compilation of >25,000 fossil specimens, reveals that the EBS biota inhabited a fan delta complex within a tectonically active basin. Preservation of soft-bodied organisms in this setting is unexpected and further underscores differences between the EBS and other Cambrian Lagerstätten. Environmental conditions, including oxygen fluctuations, slope instability, high suspended sediment concentrations, and episodic high-energy events, inhibited colonization of the lower prodelta by all but a few specialist species but favored downslope transportation and preservation of other largely endemic, shallow-water benthos. The EBS provides extraordinary insight into early Cambrian animal diversity from Gondwana. These results demonstrate how environmental factors determined community composition and provide a framework for understanding this unique Konservat-Lagerstätte.

Collagen from paleontological bones is an important organic material for isotopic measurement, radiocarbon analysis, and paleoproteomic analysis to provide information on diet, dating, taxonomy, and phylogeny. Current paleoproteomic methods are destructive and require from a few milligrams to several tens of milligrams of bone for analysis. In many cultures, bones are raw materials for artifacts that are conserved in museums, which hampers damage to these precious objects during sampling. Here, we describe a low-invasive sampling method that identifies collagen, taxonomy, and post-translational modifications from Holocene and Upper Pleistocene bones dated to 130,000 and 150 BC using dermatological skin tape discs for sampling. The sampled bone micropowders were digested following our highly optimized enhanced filter-aided sample preparation protocol and then analyzed by MALDI FTICR MS and LC-MS/MS for identifying the genus taxa of the bones. We show that this low-invasive sampling does not deteriorate the bones and achieves results similar to those obtained by more destructive sampling. Moreover, this sampling method can be carried out at archeological sites or in museums.

The initial peopling of South America is a topic of intense archaeological debate. Among the most contentious issues remain the nature of the human-megafauna interaction and the possible role of humans, along with climatic change, in the extinction of several megamammal genera at the end of the Pleistocene. In this study, we present the analysis of fossil remains with cutmarks belonging to a specimen of Neosclerocalyptus (Xenarthra, Glyptodontidae), found on the banks of the Reconquista River, northeast of the Pampean region (Argentina), whose AMS 14C dating corresponds to the Last Glacial Maximum (21,090-20,811 cal YBP). Paleoenvironmental reconstructions, stratigraphic descriptions, absolute chronological dating of bone materials, and deposits suggest a relatively rapid burial event of the bone assemblage in a semi-dry climate during a wet season. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the cut marks, reconstruction of butchering sequences, and assessments of the possible agents involved in the observed bone surface modifications indicate anthropic activities. Our results provide new elements for discussing the earliest peopling of southern South America and specifically for the interaction between humans and local megafauna in the Pampean region during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Species diversity increases with the temporal grain of samples according to the species-time relationship (STR), impacting palaeoecological analyses because the temporal grain (time averaging) of fossil assemblages varies by several orders of magnitude. We predict a positive relation between total abundance and sample size-independent diversity (ADR) in fossil assemblages because an increase in time averaging, determined by a decreasing sediment accumulation, should increase abundance and depress species dominance. We demonstrate that, in contrast to negative ADR of non-averaged living assemblages, the ADR of Holocene fossil assemblages is positive, unconditionally or when conditioned on the energy availability gradient. However, the positive fossil ADR disappears when conditioned on sediment accumulation, demonstrating that ADR is a signature of diversity scaling induced by variable time averaging. Conditioning ADR on sediment accumulation can identify and remove the scaling effect caused by time averaging, providing an avenue for unbiased biodiversity comparisons across space and time.