Comment on "An early Miocene extinction in pelagic sharks".

Sibert and Rubin (Reports, 4 June 2021, p. 1105) claim to have identified a previously unidentified, major extinction event of open-ocean sharks in the early Miocene. We argue that their interpretations are based on an experimental design that does not account for a considerable rise in the sedimentation rate coinciding with the proposed event, nor for intraspecific variation in denticle morphology.

Evolutionary drivers, morphological evolution and diversity dynamics of a surviving mammal clade: cainotherioids at the Eocene-Oligocene transition.

The Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT) represents a period of global environmental changes particularly marked in Europe and coincides with a dramatic biotic turnover. Here, using an exceptional fossil preservation, we document and analyse the diversity dynamics of a mammal clade, Cainotherioidea (Artiodactyla), that survived the EOT and radiated rapidly immediately after. We infer their diversification history from Quercy Konzentrat-Lagerstätte (south-west France) at the species level using Bayesian birth-death models. We show that cainotherioid diversity fluctuated through time, with extinction events at the EOT and in the late Oligocene, and a major speciation burst in the early Oligocene. The latter is in line with our finding that cainotherioids had a high morphological adaptability following environmental changes throughout the EOT, which probably played a key role in the survival and evolutionary success of this clade in the aftermath. Speciation is positively associated with temperature and continental fragmentation in a time-continuous way, while extinction seems to synchronize with environmental change in a punctuated way. Within-clade interactions negatively affected the cainotherioid diversification, while inter-clade competition might explain their final decline during the late Oligocene. Our results provide a detailed dynamic picture of the evolutionary history of a mammal clade in a context of global change.

Some aspects of the French contribution during the past ten years to the study and use of injectable long-acting neuroleptics.

Out of five injectable long-acting neuroleptics (LANs) in general use in France, two are french derivatives. LANs in France have been introduced at high dosages, because of the administration of high doses of oral activating neuroleptics at that time. Despite the apparent lack of relationship between dosage and adverse effects, the clinical use of LANs has nowadays moved to lower doses, probably because of the treatment of a greater proportion of less severely-ill outpatients and of patients at an early stage. The "sectorial" organization of community psychiatry in France has contributed to the low-dose LAN strategy. French authors pointed to an original indication of LANs, namely very low dosages in chronic alcoholism characterized by a high frequency of early personality disorders, such as paranoid or psychopathic traits. Adverse reactions are more pronounced in such patients at high dosages, esp. depression and sedation. The authors have been the first ones to report the incidence of depressive reactions in prolonged treatments with LANs (1967). Malignant hyperthermia, though rare, has been related to a direct onset of treatment with a LAN and not to its dosage.