Phylogenomics of sea urchins clarifies their origins and diversification history, reveals surprising discrepancies with their rich fossil record, and serves as basis to explore the sensitivity of time calibration analysis.

Evidence for a largely unexplored radiation of squamates (lizards, snakes, and amphisbaenians) in the Middle to Late Jurassic is revealed by analyses of morphospace expansion, disparity, and evolutionary rates.

Flying squirrels may have originated earlier than previously thought and remained unchanged for almost 12 million years.

The discovery of the earliest direct evidence of brood care in insects demonstrates a remarkably conserved egg-brooding reproductive strategy within scale insects in stasis for nearly 100 million years.

The fossil record of abdominal modifications in male scorpionflies documents a relatively late evolution of oppressive behaviour toward a female during mating and suggest degree of sexual coercion greater in Eocene than in any other known scorpionfly, extinct or extant.

A new high-resolution approach to probing tooth chemistry shows real potential to uncover changing rainfall patterns and environmental conditions during human prehistory.

The discovery of a fossil heart in Rhacolepis buccalis demonstrates that it is possible to scrutinize the fossil record for important clues on cardiac structure and evolution.

The earliest fossil evidence of a mimetic relationship between the Jurassic moth lacewing Lichenipolystoechotes and its co-occurring fossil lichen Daohugouthallus predates modern lichen-insect associations by 165 million years.

The morphology of the inner ear distinguishes major anthropoid clades and enables the proposal of various shared-derived features for apes as a whole, lesser apes, and great apes and humans.

The extinct stilt-legged equids of North America are not related to Asiatic asses or horses, but instead represent a distinct lineage outside of living equid diversity that became extinct in the terminal Pleistocene.