A new small-bodied azhdarchoid pterosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of England and its implications for pterosaur anatomy, diversity and phylogeny

BACKGROUND: Pterosaurs have been known from the Cretaceous sediments of the Isle of Wight (southern England, United Kingdom) since 1870. We describe the three-dimensional pelvic girdle and associated vertebrae of a small near-adult pterodactyloid from the Atherfield Clay Formation (lower Aptian, Lower Cretaceous). Despite acknowledged variation in the pterosaur pelvis, previous studies have not adequately sampled or incorporated pelvic characters into phylogenetic analyses. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The new specimen represents the new taxon Vectidraco daisymorrisae gen. et sp. nov., diagnosed by the presence of a concavity posterodorsal to the acetabulum and the form of its postacetabular process on the ilium. Several characters suggest that Vectidraco belongs to Azhdarchoidea. We constructed a pelvis-only phylogenetic analysis to test whether the pterosaur pelvis carries a useful phylogenetic signal. Resolution in recovered trees was poor, but they approximately matched trees recovered from analyses of total evidence. We also added Vectidraco and our pelvic characters to an existing total-evidence matrix for pterosaurs. Both analyses recovered Vectidraco within Azhdarchoidea. CONCLUSIONS/ SIGNIFICANCE: The Lower Cretaceous strata of western Europe have yielded members of several pterosaur lineages, but Aptian pterosaurs from western Europe are rare. With a pelvis length of 40 mm, the new animal would have had a total length of c. 350 mm, and a wingspan of c. 750 mm. Barremian and Aptian pterodactyloids from western Europe show that small-bodied azhdarchoids lived alongside ornithocheirids and istiodactylids. This assemblage is similar in terms of which lineages are represented to the coeval beds of Liaoning, China; however, the number of species and specimens present at Liaoning is much higher. While the general phylogenetic composition of western European and Chinese communities appear to have been approximately similar, the differences may be due to different palaeoenvironmental and depositional settings. The western Europe pterodactyloid record may therefore be artificially low in diversity due to preservational factors

Mobility deficit – Rehabilitate, an opportunity for functionality

There are many pathological conditions that cause mobility deficits and that ultimately influence someone’s autonomy.Aims: to evaluate patients with mobility deficits functional status; to implement a Rehabilitation Nursing intervention plan; to monitor health gains through mobility deficits rehabilitation.Conclusion: Early intervention and the implementation of a nursing rehabilitation intervention plan results in health gains (direct or indirect), decreases the risk of developing Pressure Ulcers (PU) and the risk of developing a situation of immobility that affects patients’ autonomy and quality of life

On environment difficulty and discriminating power

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10458-014-9257-1This paper presents a way to estimate the difficulty and discriminating power of any task instance. We focus on a very general setting for tasks: interactive (possibly multiagent) environments where an agent acts upon observations and rewards. Instead of analysing the complexity of the environment, the state space or the actions that are performed by the agent, we analyse the performance of a population of agent policies against the task, leading to a distribution that is examined in terms of policy complexity. This distribution is then sliced by the algorithmic complexity of the policy and analysed through several diagrams and indicators. The notion of environment response curve is also introduced, by inverting the performance results into an ability scale. We apply all these concepts, diagrams and indicators to two illustrative problems: a class of agent-populated elementary cellular automata, showing how the difficulty and discriminating power may vary for several environments, and a multiagent system, where agents can become predators or preys, and may need to coordinate. Finally, we discuss how these tools can be applied to characterise (interactive) tasks and (multi-agent) environments. These characterisations can then be used to get more insight about agent performance and to facilitate the development of adaptive tests for the evaluation of agent abilities.I thank the reviewers for their comments, especially those aiming at a clearer connection with the field of multi-agent systems and the suggestion of better approximations for the calculation of the response curves. The implementation of the elementary cellular automata used in the environments is based on the library 'CellularAutomaton' by John Hughes for R [58]. I am grateful to Fernando Soler-Toscano for letting me know about their work [65] on the complexity of 2D objects generated by elementary cellular automata. I would also like to thank David L. Dowe for his comments on a previous version of this paper. This work was supported by the MEC/MINECO projects CONSOLIDER-INGENIO CSD2007-00022 and TIN 2010-21062-C02-02, GVA project PROMETEO/2008/051, the COST - European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research IC0801 AT, and the REFRAME project, granted by the European Coordinated Research on Long-term Challenges in Information and Communication Sciences & Technologies ERA-Net (CHIST-ERA), and funded by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad in Spain (PCIN-2013-037).José Hernández-Orallo (2015). On environment difficulty and discriminating power. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. 29(3):402-454. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-014-9257-1S402454293Anderson, J., Baltes, J., & Cheng, C. T. (2011). Robotics competitions as benchmarks for ai research. The Knowledge Engineering Review, 26(01), 11–17.Andre, D., & Russell, S. J. (2002). State abstraction for programmable reinforcement learning agents. In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 119–125). Menlo Park, CA; Cambridge, MA; London; AAAI Press; MIT Press; 1999.Antunes, L., Fortnow, L., van Melkebeek, D., & Vinodchandran, N. V. (2006). Computational depth: Concept and applications. Theoretical Computer Science, 354(3), 391–404. Foundations of Computation Theory (FCT 2003), 14th Symposium on Fundamentals of Computation Theory 2003.Arai, K., Kaminka, G. A., Frank, I., & Tanaka-Ishii, K. (2003). Performance competitions as research infrastructure: Large scale comparative studies of multi-agent teams. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 7(1–2), 121–144.Ashcraft, M. H., Donley, R. D., Halas, M. A., & Vakali, M. (1992). Chapter 8 working memory, automaticity, and problem difficulty. In Jamie I.D. Campbell (Ed.), The nature and origins of mathematical skills, volume 91 of advances in psychology (pp. 301–329). North-Holland.Ay, N., Müller, M., & Szkola, A. (2010). Effective complexity and its relation to logical depth. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 56(9), 4593–4607.Barch, D. M., Braver, T. S., Nystrom, L. E., Forman, S. D., Noll, D. C., & Cohen, J. D. (1997). Dissociating working memory from task difficulty in human prefrontal cortex. Neuropsychologia, 35(10), 1373–1380.Bordini, R. H., Hübner, J. F., & Wooldridge, M. (2007). Programming multi-agent systems in AgentSpeak using Jason. London: Wiley. com.Boutilier, C., Reiter, R., Soutchanski, M., Thrun, S. et al. (2000). Decision-theoretic, high-level agent programming in the situation calculus. In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 355–362). Menlo Park, CA; Cambridge, MA; London; AAAI Press; MIT Press; 1999.Busoniu, L., Babuska, R., & De Schutter, B. (2008). A comprehensive survey of multiagent reinforcement learning. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, 38(2), 156–172.Chaitin, G. J. (1977). Algorithmic information theory. IBM Journal of Research and Development, 21, 350–359.Chedid, F. B. (2010). Sophistication and logical depth revisited. In 2010 IEEE/ACS International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA) (pp. 1–4). IEEE.Cheeseman, P., Kanefsky, B. & Taylor, W. M. (1991). Where the really hard problems are. In Proceedings of IJCAI-1991 (pp. 331–337).Dastani, M. (2008). 2APL: A practical agent programming language. Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems, 16(3), 214–248.Delahaye, J. P. & Zenil, H. (2011). Numerical evaluation of algorithmic complexity for short strings: A glance into the innermost structure of randomness. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 219(1), 63–77Dowe, D. L. (2008). Foreword re C. S. Wallace. Computer Journal, 51(5), 523–560. Christopher Stewart WALLACE (1933–2004) memorial special issue.Dowe, D. L., & Hernández-Orallo, J. (2012). IQ tests are not for machines, yet. Intelligence, 40(2), 77–81.Du, D. Z., & Ko, K. I. (2011). Theory of computational complexity (Vol. 58). London: Wiley-Interscience.Elo, A. E. (1978). The rating of chessplayers, past and present (Vol. 3). London: Batsford.Embretson, S. E., & Reise, S. P. (2000). Item response theory for psychologists. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.Fatès, N. & Chevrier, V. (2010). How important are updating schemes in multi-agent systems? an illustration on a multi-turmite model. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: volume 1-Volume 1 (pp. 533–540). International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.Ferber, J. & Müller, J. P. (1996). Influences and reaction: A model of situated multiagent systems. In Proceedings of Second International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS-96) (pp. 72–79).Ferrando, P. J. (2009). Difficulty, discrimination, and information indices in the linear factor analysis model for continuous item responses. Applied Psychological Measurement, 33(1), 9–24.Ferrando, P. J. (2012). Assessing the discriminating power of item and test scores in the linear factor-analysis model. Psicológica, 33, 111–139.Gent, I. P., & Walsh, T. (1994). Easy problems are sometimes hard. Artificial Intelligence, 70(1), 335–345.Gershenson, C. & Fernandez, N. (2012). Complexity and information: Measuring emergence, self-organization, and homeostasis at multiple scales. Complexity, 18(2), 29–44.Gruner, S. (2010). Mobile agent systems and cellular automata. Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems, 20(2), 198–233.Hardman, D. K., & Payne, S. J. (1995). Problem difficulty and response format in syllogistic reasoning. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 48(4), 945–975.He, J., Reeves, C., Witt, C., & Yao, X. (2007). A note on problem difficulty measures in black-box optimization: Classification, realizations and predictability. Evolutionary Computation, 15(4), 435–443.Hernández-Orallo, J. (2000). Beyond the turing test. Journal of Logic Language & Information, 9(4), 447–466.Hernández-Orallo, J. (2000). On the computational measurement of intelligence factors. In A. Meystel (Ed.), Performance metrics for intelligent systems workshop (pp. 1–8). Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology.Hernández-Orallo, J. (2000). Thesis: Computational measures of information gain and reinforcement in inference processes. AI Communications, 13(1), 49–50.Hernández-Orallo, J. (2010). A (hopefully) non-biased universal environment class for measuring intelligence of biological and artificial systems. In M. Hutter et al. (Ed.), 3rd International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (pp. 182–183). Atlantis Press Extended report at http://users.dsic.upv.es/proy/anynt/unbiased.pdf .Hernández-Orallo, J., & Dowe, D. L. (2010). Measuring universal intelligence: Towards an anytime intelligence test. Artificial Intelligence, 174(18), 1508–1539.Hernández-Orallo, J., Dowe, D. L., España-Cubillo, S., Hernández-Lloreda, M. V., & Insa-Cabrera, J. (2011). On more realistic environment distributions for defining, evaluating and developing intelligence. In J. Schmidhuber, K. R. Thórisson, & M. Looks (Eds.), LNAI series on artificial general intelligence 2011 (Vol. 6830, pp. 82–91). Berlin: Springer.Hernández-Orallo, J., Dowe, D. L., & Hernández-Lloreda, M. V. (2014). Universal psychometrics: Measuring cognitive abilities in the machine kingdom. Cognitive Systems Research, 27, 50–74.Hernández-Orallo, J., Insa, J., Dowe, D. L. & Hibbard, B. (2012). Turing tests with turing machines. In A. Voronkov (Ed.), The Alan Turing Centenary Conference, Turing-100, Manchester, 2012, volume 10 of EPiC Series (pp. 140–156).Hernández-Orallo, J. & Minaya-Collado, N. (1998). A formal definition of intelligence based on an intensional variant of Kolmogorov complexity. In Proceedings of International Symposium of Engineering of Intelligent Systems (EIS’98) (pp. 146–163). ICSC Press.Hibbard, B. (2009). Bias and no free lunch in formal measures of intelligence. Journal of Artificial General Intelligence, 1(1), 54–61.Hoos, H. H. (1999). Sat-encodings, search space structure, and local search performance. In 1999 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 16, pp. 296–303).Insa-Cabrera, J., Benacloch-Ayuso, J. L., & Hernández-Orallo, J. (2012). On measuring social intelligence: Experiments on competition and cooperation. In J. Bach, B. Goertzel, & M. Iklé (Eds.), AGI, volume 7716 of lecture notes in computer science (pp. 126–135). Berlin: Springer.Insa-Cabrera, J., Dowe, D. L., España-Cubillo, S., Hernández-Lloreda, M. V., & Hernández-Orallo, J. (2011). Comparing humans and AI agents. In J. Schmidhuber, K. R. Thórisson, & M. Looks (Eds.), LNAI series on artificial general intelligence 2011 (Vol. 6830, pp. 122–132). Berlin: Springer.Knuth, D. E. (1973). Sorting and searching, volume 3 of the art of computer programming. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Kotovsky, K., & Simon, H. A. (1990). What makes some problems really hard: Explorations in the problem space of difficulty. Cognitive Psychology, 22(2), 143–183.Legg, S. (2008). Machine super intelligence. PhD thesis, Department of Informatics, University of Lugano, June 2008.Legg, S., & Hutter, M. (2007). Universal intelligence: A definition of machine intelligence. Minds and Machines, 17(4), 391–444.Leonetti, M. & Iocchi, L. (2010). Improving the performance of complex agent plans through reinforcement learning. In Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (Vol. 1, pp. 723–730). International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.Levin, L. A. (1973). Universal sequential search problems. Problems of Information Transmission, 9(3), 265–266.Levin, L. A. (1986). Average case complete problems. SIAM Journal on Computing, 15, 285.Li, M., & Vitányi, P. (2008). An introduction to Kolmogorov complexity and its applications (3rd ed.). Berlin: Springer.Low, C. K., Chen, T. Y., & Rónnquist, R. (1999). Automated test case generation for bdi agents. Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems, 2(4), 311–332.Madden, M. G., & Howley, T. (2004). Transfer of experience between reinforcement learning environments with progressive difficulty. Artificial Intelligence Review, 21(3), 375–398.Mellenbergh, G. J. (1994). Generalized linear item response theory. Psychological Bulletin, 115(2), 300.Michel, F. (2004). Formalisme, outils et éléments méthodologiques pour la modélisation et la simulation multi-agents. PhD thesis, Université des sciences et techniques du Languedoc, Montpellier.Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81.Orponen, P., Ko, K. I., Schöning, U., & Watanabe, O. (1994). Instance complexity. Journal of the ACM (JACM), 41(1), 96–121.Simon, H. A., & Kotovsky, K. (1963). Human acquisition of concepts for sequential patterns. Psychological Review, 70(6), 534.Team, R., et al. (2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Whiteson, S., Tanner, B., & White, A. (2010). The reinforcement learning competitions. The AI Magazine, 31(2), 81–94.Wiering, M., & van Otterlo, M. (Eds.). (2012). Reinforcement learning: State-of-the-art. Berlin: Springer.Wolfram, S. (2002). A new kind of science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media.Zatuchna, Z., & Bagnall, A. (2009). Learning mazes with aliasing states: An LCS algorithm with associative perception. Adaptive Behavior, 17(1), 28–57.Zenil, H. (2010). Compression-based investigation of the dynamical properties of cellular automata and other systems. Complex Systems, 19(1), 1–28.Zenil, H. (2011). Une approche expérimentale à la théorie algorithmique de la complexité. PhD thesis, Dissertation in fulfilment of the degree of Doctor in Computer Science, Université de Lille.Zenil, H., Soler-Toscano, F., Delahaye, J. P. & Gauvrit, N. (2012). Two-dimensional kolmogorov complexity and validation of the coding theorem method by compressibility. arXiv, preprint arXiv:1212.6745

Three-point correlators for giant magnons

Three-point correlation functions in the strong-coupling regime of the AdS/CFT correspondence can be analyzed within a semiclassical approximation when two of the vertex operators correspond to heavy string states having large quantum numbers while the third vertex corresponds to a light state with fixed charges. We consider the case where the heavy string states are chosen to be giant magnon solitons with either a single or two different angular momenta, for various different choices of light string states.Comment: 15 pages. Latex. v2: Misprints corrected. Published versio

Polyfunctional T cell responses in children in early stages of chronic Trypanosoma cruzi infection contrast with monofunctional responses of long-term infected adults

Background: Adults with chronic Trypanosoma cruzi exhibit a poorly functional T cell compartment, characterized by monofunctional (IFN-γ-only secreting) parasite-specific T cells and increased levels of terminally differentiated T cells. It is possible that persistent infection and/or sustained exposure to parasites antigens may lead to a progressive loss of function of the immune T cells. Methodology/Principal Findings: To test this hypothesis, the quality and magnitude of T. cruzi-specific T cell responses were evaluated in T. cruzi-infected children and compared with long-term T. cruzi-infected adults with no evidence of heart failure. The phenotype of CD4+ T cells was also assessed in T. cruzi-infected children and uninfected controls. Simultaneous secretion of IFN-γ and IL-2 measured by ELISPOT assays in response to T. cruzi antigens was prevalent among T. cruzi-infected children. Flow cytometric analysis of co-expression profiles of CD4+ T cells with the ability to produce IFN-γ, TNF-α, or to express the co-stimulatory molecule CD154 in response to T. cruzi showed polyfunctional T cell responses in most T. cruzi-infected children. Monofunctional T cell responses and an absence of CD4+TNF-α+-secreting T cells were observed in T. cruzi-infected adults. A relatively high degree of activation and differentiation of CD4+ T cells was evident in T. cruzi-infected children. Conclusions/Significance: Our observations are compatible with our initial hypothesis that persistent T. cruzi infection promotes eventual exhaustion of immune system, which might contribute to disease progression in long-term infected subjects.Fil: Albareda, María Cecilia. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: de Rissio, Ana María. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología; ArgentinaFil: Tomas, Gonzalo. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología; ArgentinaFil: Serjan, Alicia. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Hospital General de Agudos "Juan A. Fernández"; ArgentinaFil: Alvarez, María Gabriela. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: Viotti, Rodolfo Jorge. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: Fichera, Laura Edith. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Esteva, Mónica Inés. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología; ArgentinaFil: Potente, Daniel Fernando. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: Armenti, Alejandro. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: Tarleton, Rick L.. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Laucella, Susana Adriana. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Finite-gap equations for strings on AdS_3 x S^3 x T^4 with mixed 3-form flux

We study superstrings on AdS_3 x S^3 x T^4 supported by a combination of Ramond-Ramond and Neveu-Schwarz-Neveu-Schwarz three form fluxes, and construct a set of finite-gap equations that describe the classical string spectrum. Using the recently proposed all-loop S-matrix we write down the all-loop Bethe ansatz equations for the massive sector. In the thermodynamic limit the Bethe ansatz reproduces the finite-gap equations. As part of this derivation we propose expressions for the leading order dressing phases. These phases differ from the well-known Arutyunov-Frolov-Staudacher phase that appears in the pure Ramond-Ramond case. We also consider the one-loop quantization of the algebraic curve and determine the one-loop corrections to the dressing phases. Finally we consider some classical string solutions including finite size giant magnons and circular strings.Comment: 44 pages, 3 figures. v2: references and a discussion about perturbative results adde

Nitrogen uptake and internal recycling in Zostera marina exposed to oyster farming: eelgrass potential as a natural biofilter

Oyster farming in estuaries and coastal lagoons frequently overlaps with the distribution of seagrass meadows, yet there are few studies on how this aquaculture practice affects seagrass physiology. We compared in situ nitrogen uptake and the productivity of Zostera marina shoots growing near off-bottom longlines and at a site not affected by oyster farming in San Quintin Bay, a coastal lagoon in Baja California, Mexico. We used benthic chambers to measure leaf NH4 (+) uptake capacities by pulse labeling with (NH4)-N-15 (+) and plant photosynthesis and respiration. The internal N-15 resorption/recycling was measured in shoots 2 weeks after incubations. The natural isotopic composition of eelgrass tissues and vegetative descriptors were also examined. Plants growing at the oyster farming site showed a higher leaf NH4 (+) uptake rate (33.1 mmol NH4 (+) m(-2) day(-1)) relative to those not exposed to oyster cultures (25.6 mmol NH4 (+) m(-2) day(-1)). We calculated that an eelgrass meadow of 15-16 ha (which represents only about 3-4 % of the subtidal eelgrass meadow cover in the western arm of the lagoon) can potentially incorporate the total amount of NH4 (+) excreted by oysters (similar to 5.2 x 10(6) mmol NH4 (+) day(-1)). This highlights the potential of eelgrass to act as a natural biofilter for the NH4 (+) produced by oyster farming. Shoots exposed to oysters were more efficient in re-utilizing the internal N-15 into the growth of new leaf tissues or to translocate it to belowground tissues. Photosynthetic rates were greater in shoots exposed to oysters, which is consistent with higher NH4 (+) uptake and less negative delta C-13 values. Vegetative production (shoot size, leaf growth) was also higher in these shoots. Aboveground/belowground biomass ratio was lower in eelgrass beds not directly influenced by oyster farms, likely related to the higher investment in belowground biomass to incorporate sedimentary nutrients

Evidence for plunging river plume deposits in the Pahrump Hills member of the Murray formation, Gale crater, Mars

Recent robotic missions to Mars have offered new insights into the extent, diversity and habitability of the Martian sedimentary rock record. Since the Curiosity rover landed in Gale crater in August 2012, the Mars Science Laboratory Science Team has explored the origins and habitability of ancient fluvial, deltaic, lacustrine and aeolian deposits preserved within the crater. This study describes the sedimentology of a ca 13 m thick succession named the Pahrump Hills member of the Murray formation, the first thick fine‐grained deposit discovered in situ on Mars. This work evaluates the depositional processes responsible for its formation and reconstructs its palaeoenvironmental setting. The Pahrump Hills succession can be sub‐divided into four distinct sedimentary facies: (i) thinly laminated mudstone; (ii) low‐angle cross‐stratified mudstone; (iii) cross‐stratified sandstone; and (iv) thickly laminated mudstone–sandstone. The very fine grain size of the mudstone facies and abundant millimetre‐scale and sub‐millimetre‐scale laminations exhibiting quasi‐uniform thickness throughout the Pahrump Hills succession are most consistent with lacustrine deposition. Low‐angle geometric discordances in the mudstone facies are interpreted as ‘scour and drape’ structures and suggest the action of currents, such as those associated with hyperpycnal river‐generated plumes plunging into a lake. Observation of an overall upward coarsening in grain size and thickening of laminae throughout the Pahrump Hills succession is consistent with deposition from basinward progradation of a fluvial‐deltaic system derived from the northern crater rim into the Gale crater lake. Palaeohydraulic modelling constrains the salinity of the ancient lake in Gale crater: assuming river sediment concentrations typical of floods on Earth, plunging river plumes and sedimentary structures like those observed at Pahrump Hills would have required lake densities near freshwater to form. The depositional model for the Pahrump Hills member presented here implies the presence of an ancient sustained, habitable freshwater lake in Gale crater for at least ca 103 to 107 Earth years

New Insights into the Skull of Istiodactylus latidens (Ornithocheiroidea, Pterodactyloidea)

The skull of the Cretaceous pterosaur Istiodactylus latidens, a historically important species best known for its broad muzzle of interlocking, lancet-shaped teeth, is almost completely known from the broken remains of several individuals, but the length of its jaws remains elusive. Estimates of I. latidens jaw length have been exclusively based on the incomplete skull of NHMUK R3877 and, perhaps erroneously, reconstructed by assuming continuation of its broken skull pieces as preserved in situ. Here, an overlooked jaw fragment of NHMUK R3877 is redescribed and used to revise the skull reconstruction of I. latidens. The new reconstruction suggests a much shorter skull than previously supposed, along with a relatively tall orbital region and proportionally slender maxilla, a feature documented in the early 20th century but ignored by all skull reconstructions of this species. These features indicate that the skull of I. latidens is particularly distinctive amongst istiodactylids and suggests greater disparity between I. latidens and I. sinensis than previously appreciated. A cladistic analysis of istiodactylid pterosaurs incorporating new predicted I. latidens skull metrics suggests Istiodactylidae is constrained to five species (Liaoxipterus brachyognathus, Lonchengpterus zhoai, Nurhachius ignaciobritoi, Istiodactylus latidens and Istiodactylus sinensis) defined by their distinctive dentition, but excludes the putative istiodactylids Haopterus gracilis and Hongshanopterus lacustris. Istiodactylus latidens, I. sinensis and Li. brachyognathus form an unresolved clade of derived istiodactylids, and the similarity of comparable remains of I. sinensis and Li. brachyognathus suggest further work into their taxonomy and classification is required. The new skull model of I. latidens agrees with the scavenging habits proposed for these pterosaurs, with much of their cranial anatomy converging on that of habitually scavenging birds