Fossil Friday Roundup: August 12, 2016

Featured image: The Piltdown Man is back in the headlines this week! Above: Group portrait of the Piltdown skull being examined. Back row (from left): F. O. Barlow, G. Elliot Smith, Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward. Front row: A S Underwood, Arthur Keith, W. P. Pycraft, and Ray Lankester. Painting by John Cooke, 1915. Public Domain.

Papers (all Open Access):

• Molecular phylogenetic analysis of nuclear genes suggests a Cenozoic over-water dispersal origin for the Cuban solenodon (Scientific Reports)
• Oldest fossil remains of the enigmatic pig-footed bandicoot show rapid herbivorous evolution (Royal Society Open Science)
• New genetic and morphological evidence suggests a single hoaxer created ‘Piltdown man’ (Royal Society Open Science)
• Reproduction in Mesozoic birds and evolution of the modern avian reproductive mode (The Auk)
• Measure, Then Show: Grasping Human Evolution Through an Inquiry-Based, Data-driven Hominin Skulls Lab (PLOS ONE)
• Ontogeny reveals function and evolution of the hadrosaurid dinosaur dental battery (BMC Evolutionary Biology)
• Natural Constraints to Species Diversification (PLOS Biology)

Society Events and Updates:

• Early Registration Deadline for the SVP Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah is August 16! For more information and to register for the meeting, click here.
• The Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Abstracts volume has been published online in VAMP [Link]

News:

• Textbook story of how humans populated America is “biologically unviable”, study finds [Link]
• Unearthed: the cannibal sharks of a forgotten age [Link]
• Meet the fighting dinosaurs of Trenton [Link]
• Father, son find rare dinosaur fossil in Japan [Link]
• Dinosaur fossils display celebrated at Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center [Link]
• Manitoba Museum unveils rare pliosaur fossil [Link]
• One Man’s Incredible Collection of Fossilized Poop to become part of online poo museum [Link]

Around the Blogosphere:

• Paleontologist and homebrewer Andy Farke explores a surprising connection between the ancient bird Archaeopteryx and modern beer [Link]
• What happened after the dinosaur-killing asteroid hit the Earth? [Link]
• Is Internal/External Eternal? [Link]
• Andy Farke is at it again for SVP! Here he discusses Taphonomy Tourism [Link]
• Tracking Australia’s dinosaur past [Link]
• Paleontologists Uncover Ancient Crocodile Nesting Ground in Brazil [Link]
• A (palaeo)biologist postdoc’s views of the past, present and future [Link]
• Late Cretaceous and Modern Diatom Ecology: Implications for our Changing Oceans [Link]

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 or tweet it to us at @PLOSPaleo.

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