Aging the oldest turtles: the placodont affinities of Priscochelys hegnabrunnensis

Priscochelys hegnabrunnensis, a fragmentary piece of armour shell from the Muschelkalk of Germany (Upper Triassic) with few diagnostic morphological features, was recently proposed to represent the oldest known stem turtle. As such, the specimen is of high importance because it shifts the date of the first appearance of turtles back about 20Ma, which equals about 10% of the total stratigraphic range of the group. In this paper, I present new morphologic, histologic and neutron tomographic (NT) data that relate to the microstructure of the bone of the specimen itself. In opposition to the previous morphologic descriptions, P. hegnabrunnensis was found to share several distinctive features (i.e. bone sutures congruent with scute sulci, absence of a diploe structure with interior cancellous bone, thin vascular canals radiating outwards from distinct centres in each field and rugose ventral bone surface texture consisting of mineralised fibre bundles) with cyamodontoid placodonts (Diapsida: Sauropterygia) and fewer with stem turtles (i.e. depth of sulci). Two aspects that were previously thought to be relevant for the assignment to the turtle stem (conical scutes and presence of foramina) are argued to be of dubious value. P. hegnabrunnensis is proposed to represent a fragmentary piece of cyamodontoid armour consisting of fused conical plates herein. The specimen is not a part of the turtle stem and thus does not represent the oldest turtle. Accordingly, P. hegnabrunnensis does not shorten the ghost lineage to the potential sister group of turtle

Numerical approximation of statistical solutions of scalar conservation laws

We propose efficient numerical algorithms for approximating statistical solutions of scalar conservation laws. The proposed algorithms combine finite volume spatio-temporal approximations with Monte Carlo and multi-level Monte Carlo discretizations of the probability space. Both sets of methods are proved to converge to the entropy statistical solution. We also prove that there is a considerable gain in efficiency resulting from the multi-level Monte Carlo method over the standard Monte Carlo method. Numerical experiments illustrating the ability of both methods to accurately compute multi-point statistical quantities of interest are also presented

Survival of the thinnest: rediscovery of Bauer's (1898) ichthyosaur tooth sections from Upper Jurassic lithographic limestone quarries, south Germany

The re-discovery of nine petrographic slides from the late 19th century at the palaeontological collections of the University of Zurich, showing thin-sectioned ichthyosaur teeth, revealed these slides be the only preserved remains of the historical collection of Upper Jurassic ichthyosaurs from the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology; fossil material which, up to now, was thought to have been completely destroyed during World War II. Here the history of these slides, from their origin in Munich as part of the doctoral thesis of Franz Bauer (1898) to their rediscovery in Zurich in 2010 is presented. Furthermore, a complete overview of all slides is given to elucidate their scientific value with the background of up-to-date knowledge of ichthyosaur dentition and tooth histology, including aspects of tissue and growth mark identification. As such, the sectioned teeth show an exposed layer of acellular cementum at the tooth neck, and sets of short and long period growth lines in the orthodentine. The slides of one tooth are part of the original syntype material of Aegirosaurus leptospondylus (Wagner). They reveal an oval rather than a rectangular shape of the root, as well as the presence of peculiar vascular canals, interpreted as secondary osteodentine deposition, in the peri-pulpal orthodentin

The late Miocene caimanine fauna (Crocodylia: Alligatoroidea) of the Urumaco Formation, Venezuela

The late Miocene Urumaco Formation at Urumaco, Falcón state, Venezuela, is remarkably rich in extinct crocodylians, presenting a diversity hotspot in the Neotropics for the group. Herein, we revise the Caimaninae fauna by including novel fossil material as well as the previously described specimens assignable to this clade. In many instances the taxonomic status of species could be confirmed, which is the case in Caiman brevirostris, Globidentosuchus brevirostris, and Purussaurus mirandai, and novel osteological data is presented to corroborate previous anatomical descriptions. In other cases, specimens needed to be reassigned to different taxa; with material previously identified as Caiman lutescens now considered as belonging to either Caiman latirostris or Caiman wannlangstoni, and material of Melanosuchus fisheri reassigned to Caimaninae aff. Melanosuchus fisheri. Furthermore, Mourasuchus nativus is considered to be a junior synonym of Mourasuchus arendsi herein. This suggests that there are only three species of the duck-billed caimanine Mourasuchus present in the Miocene of South America, having colonised the continent from the northwest (Colombia and Peru) during the middle Miocene and moving to the east and southeast (Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina) in the late Miocene. Other specimens, which were previously identified as belonging to the genus Caiman, lack diagnostic features of the modern genus and are instead considered as Caimaninae indet. Besides improving the knowledge of the late Miocene crocodylians of South America, our results confirm the high taxonomic diversity of the fauna and the outstanding level of sympatry previously reported for the Urumaco Formation

Growth in fossil and extant deer and implications for body size and life history evolution

© Kolb et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The attached file is the published version of the article

3D model and accompanying dataset related to the publication: A new, exceptionally preserved juvenile specimen of Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi (Diapsida) and implications for Mesozoic marine diapsid phylogeny

The present contribution contains the 3D model and dataset analyzed in the following publication: Scheyer, T. M., J. M. Neenan, T. Bodogan, H. Furrer, C. Obrist, and M. Plamondon. 2017. A new, exceptionally preserved juvenile specimen of Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi (Diapsida) and implications for Mesozoic marine diapsid phylogeny. Scientific Reports, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-04514-x

Corrupting Effectiveness: Utilitarianism and Moral Impartiality toward Future Persons in Pragmatic Evaluation of Altruistic Interventions.

In recent years billions of philanthropic dollars have been deployed through a movement and philosophy known as Effective Altruism, notably through the organizations Open Philanthropy, GiveWell, Good Ventures, and the over 3,200 persons taking the ‘Giving What We Can’ pledge to limit their personal income and donate the remainder to charity. Effective Altruism, or EA, explicitly aims to ‘use evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others.’ Within the EA community there are competing viewpoints on how to evaluate effectiveness, which forms of evidence and reasoning are best, and several leading philosophers with their own adherents and value systems. The discussions surrounding the employment of these viewpoints can grow heated, with one commenter complaining that ‘Effective Altruism markets itself as being centered on addressing global poverty, when in fact it is centered on manipulating people into believing in the imaginary AI doomsday.’ This complaint highlights a major schism within EA. On one side is the empirical evaluation of existing altruistic interventions according to their own internal justifications - the attempts to judge the most effective way to solve current issues like global poverty, using hard data and statistics. On the other side is the a logically based rationalist effort to determine undervalued new interventions, bring them appropriate funding, and potentially solve issues which are ignored by mainstream altruism. From within the community, these two parts of the current EA community are often considered two sides of the same coin. Extrapolations of techniques used to evaluate current interventions often provide the justification for attempting new interventions, and can highlight areas worth a closer examination or the allocation of more funding. Over time, a single paradigm has come to dominate many of these extrapolations, leading to the complaint above. Nicholas Beckstead, a program officer at Open Philanthropy, laid out the argument underpinning this paradigm in a 2013 doctoral thesis titled ‘On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future.’ The argument in this thesis, which we will call the Far Future Trillions Argument (FFTA), is central to many of the most heated discussions in how to best employ the billions of dollars of the Effective Altruism. After careful consideration it is our reasoned opinion that the Far Future Trillions Argument and its resulting recommendations, while internally coherent and defensible, are not within the remit of a movement characterized by the use of evidence in determining the effectiveness of altruistic interventions. This overall conclusion is based on seven separate arguments. The first argument is based on empirical evaluation of foreign aid interventions, and concludes that characteristics of the FFTA are inimical to effective interventions. Our second and third arguments conclude that the FFTA lacks certain characteristics of pragmatic models, and requires empirically fallacious methodological assumptions to connect far future outcomes with present interventions. Fourth and fifth, we argue that the purely rationalist, philosophical nature of the FFTA divorces it from evidence in a way that inherently foils the determination of the effectiveness of interventions based upon it. Our sixth and seventh arguments take issue with the ongoing privileged employ of the version of utilitarianism and moral impartiality toward future persons used in the FFTA and its offshoot justifications, asserting that the inclusion of a full and wider scope of normative justifications is necessary for pragmatic modeling

Serum insulin-like growth factor-1 and its binding protein-7: potential novel biomarkers for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction

BACKGROUND: Insulin-like growth factor binding protein-7 (IGFBP-7) modulates the biological activities of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). Previous studies demonstrated the prognostic value of IGFBP-7 and IGF-1 among patients with systolic heart failure (HF). This study aimed to evaluate the IGF1/IGFBP-7 axis in HF patients with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). METHODS: Serum IGF-1 and IGFBP-7 levels were measured in 300 eligible consecutive patients who underwent comprehensive cardiac assessment. Patients were categorized into 3 groups including controls with normal diastolic function (n = 55), asymptomatic left ventricular diastolic dysfunction (LVDD, n = 168) and HFpEF (n = 77). RESULTS: IGFBP-7 serum levels showed a significant graded increase from controls to LVDD to HFpEF (median 50.30 [43.1-55.3] vs. 54.40 [48.15-63.40] vs. 61.9 [51.6-69.7], respectively, P < 0.001), whereas IGF-1 levels showed a graded decline from controls to LVDD to HFpEF (120.0 [100.8-144.0] vs. 112.3 [88.8-137.1] vs. 99.5 [72.2-124.4], p < 0.001). The IGFBP-7/IGF-1 ratio increased from controls to LVDD to HFpEF (0.43 [0.33-0.56] vs. 0.48 [0.38-0.66] vs. 0.68 [0.55-0.88], p < 0.001). Patents with IGFB-7/IGF1 ratios above the median demonstrated significantly higher left atrial volume index, E/E’ ratio, and NT-proBNP levels (all P ≤ 0.02). CONCLUSION: In conclusion, this hypothesis-generating pilot study suggests the IGFBP-7/IGF-1 axis correlates with diastolic function and may serve as a novel biomarker in patients with HFpEF. A rise in IGFBP-7 or the IGFBP-7/IGF-1 ratio may reflect worsening diastolic function, adverse cardiac remodeling, and metabolic derangement

Cranial shape variation in jacarean caimanines (Crocodylia, Alligatoroidea) and its implications in the taxonomic status of extinct species: The case of Melanosuchus fisheri

Cranial shape variation in jacarean caimanines (Crocodylia, Alligatoroidea) and its implications in the taxonomic status of extinct specie