Fossil Friday Roundup: December 23, 2016

Featured Image: Triceratops ornament adorns a Christmas Tree. Ornament was purchased at The Field Museum, Image by Sarah Gibson. Happy Holidays from the PLOS Paleo Community Editors!

Papers (All Open Access):

• Cretaceous origin of dogwoods: an anatomically preserved Cornus (Cornaceae) fruit from the Campanian of Vancouver Island (PeerJ)
• Floral development and vascularization help to explain merism evolution in Paepalanthus (Eriocaulaceae, Poales) (PeerJ)
• The first fossil New World Dixidae with a critical discussion of generic definitions (PalaeoE)
• Deciphering the preservation of fossil insects: a case study from the Crato Member, Early Cretaceous of Brazil (PeerJ)
• A Large Ornithurine Bird (Tingmiatornis arctica) from the Turonian High Arctic: Climatic and Evolutionary Implications (Scientific Reports)
• Condylura (Mammalia, Talpidae) reloaded: New insights about the fossil representatives of the genus (PalaeoE)
• Odyssey in the evolution of a paleopathologist (Fossil Record)
• Nannotanyderinae: a new subfamily of Tanyderidae (Diptera) (PalaeoE)
• Reappraisal of Europe’s most complete Early Cretaceous plesiosaurian: Brancasaurus brancai Wegner, 1914 from the “Wealden facies” of Germany (PeerJ)
• The emergence of core eudicots: new floral evidence from the earliest Late Cretaceous (Proceedings B)
• Extreme Ontogenetic Changes in a Ceratosaurian Theropod (Current Biology)

News:

• A Conversation with NHMU’s Randy Irmis (Link)
• Fossilized Water Fleas – A new study of the evolution of the micro-crustacean group Cladocera (Link)
• Studies Refute Hypothesis on What Caused Abrupt Climate Change Thousands of Years Ago (Link)

Around the Blogosphere:

• Paleontology’s Artistic Renaissance Will Be Violent AF (The Inverse)
• Dinosaurs, Gorillas, & More: Re-remembering Richard Owen (Paige Fossil History)
• Picturing Data, Narrating History (Extinct)
• Who Discovered the Iguanodon? (Dr. Neurosaurus)
• A brief history of the Climate science (Letters from Gondwana)
• Club Late Ordovician (Equatorial Minnesota)
• Nonstandard Ideas in Amphibian Evolution, Part 2: Salamanders and Caecilians Evolved Independently of all other tetrapods (Tetrapod Zoology)
• Most Dinosaur Species are Still Undiscovered (Laelaps)
• Paleo Profile: Ozimek’s Flyer (Laelaps)
• The popularity of dinosaurs – for better, for worse (Mark Witton)
• Hidden Sea Dragons: Discovering new species of ichthyosaurs in museum collections (Earth Archives)
• Bursting the Limits of What’s Possible: Best Paleoanthropology of 2016 (Paige Fossil History)
• Vintage Dinosaur Art: Discovering Dinosaurs (Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs)
• Have yourself a Mesozoic Christmas … (The Guardian)
• From China, a Flock of Fossils (Science Friday)
• Eliann Stoffel – Unlocking the Secrets of a Forgotten Mammoth (Mostly Mammoths)
• Phylogenetics is Moon Man Talk (Extinct Monsters)
• Sprint of the giant cheetah (Chasing Sabretooths)
• PLOS Paleo Top 10 OA Fossil Vertebrates #3: Lunaophis aquaticus (PLOS Paleo Community)
• Dinosaur bonebeds and biogeography: what the tiniest fossils tell us about the largest patterns (PLOS Paleo Community)
• How sauropods gobbled their way to gigantism (PLOS Paleo Community)
• Best Practices for Bone Measurements (PLOS Paleo Community)
• PLOS Paleo Top 10 OA Fossil Vertebrates #4: Lohuecosuchus (PLOS Paleo Community)
• PLOS Paleo Top 10 OA Fossil Vertebrates #5: Atopodentatus unicus (PLOS Paleo Community)

Do you have some news, a blog, or something just plain cool you want to share with the PLOS Paleo Community? Email it to us at paleocommunity@plos.org, tweet it to us at @PLOSPaleo, or message us on Facebook.