Gender authorship trends in spine research publications - Research across different countries from 1976 to 2020.

•Gender trends in authorship showed an increase in female authors from 1976 to 2020.•In 2020, Europe had the highest and Asia the lowest proportion of female authors.•The Netherlands had the highest proportion of women and Japan the lowest

New Herpetofaunal Records from the Kingdom of Bhutan Obtained through Citizen Science

Social media has, in the past decade, emerged unexpectedly as a powerful tool in citizen science (Liberatore et al. 2018). Whether unintended or formally integrated, it offers, among other benefits, mass participation in activities such as data collection in inventories, monitoring, or natural history observations (Tulloch 2013). It can be argued that such activities often do not consume taxpayers’ contributions, as formal research projects tend to do, and can provide a cost-effective means of data collection (Goldstien et al. 2014). The vast number of (and rapidly rising) online resources and virtual specialists available to identify samples serve as references and reviewers of such data, increasing the speed over traditional forms of data collection (e.g., scientific publishing) and providing the capacity to absorb multiple opinions. Nonetheless, challenges that remain in citizen science programs are directing the data towards priority scientific objectives and needs, and achieving high standards in data quality (Ambrose-Oji et al. 2014)

A new enantiornithine bird from the Late Cretaceous of the Gobi Desert

We report on a new species of enantiornithine bird from the Late Cretaceous of the Mongolian Gobi Desert, which adds to the meager record of birds from the latest part of the Mesozoic in this region. The exceptional, three-dimensional bones of the new fossil increase the known anatomical diversity of enantiornithine birds, providing information about previously unreported morphologies such as a pneumatised furcula. Several synapomorphies nest the new bird within an enantiornithine clade of proficient fliers, but the anatomy and proportions of its flight apparatus imply significant aerodynamic restrictions. The combination of phylogeny and our functional interpretation suggests that this new fossil bird is a representative of a flightless lineage. This discovery thus provides the first evidence of a trend towards more limited flying capabilities among Enantiornithes, a group of Cretaceous birds otherwise believed to be represented by competent flier