Franz Baron Nopcsa: A short life of research in dinosaur evolutionary paleobiology and Albanology.

The short life of Hungarian paleontologist and Albanologist, Franz Baron Nopcsa (1877-1933) is reviewed with an eye on his discoveries of the dinosaurs of Transylvania and their dwarfed nature, as well as his interest in the people of Albania, especially their social organization, laws, history, and ethnography during the first and second Balkan Wars. He also engaged in espionage in Romania during World War I. In addition to his research on the dwarfed dinosaurs and their insular context, his paleontological work also focused on neo-Lamarckian evolutionary theory, the origin of avian flight, and growth and sexual dimorphism in dinosaurs based on osteology and bone microstructure.

Larisa DeSantis.

Interview with Larisa DeSantis, who uses fossil mammals to study ancient climate change and extinctions, with a view to understand past and present ecosystems, at Vanderbilt University.

Jennifer McElwain.

Interview with Jennifer McElwain, who performs plant experiments in controlled atmospheric, light and climatic conditions at Trinity College Dublin to assess how these factors have influenced plant evolution and ecology throughout Earth's history.

Relative demographic susceptibility does not explain the extinction chronology of Sahul's megafauna.

The causes of Sahul's megafauna extinctions remain uncertain, although several interacting factors were likely responsible. To examine the relative support for hypotheses regarding plausible ecological mechanisms underlying these extinctions, we constructed the first stochastic, age-structured models for 13 extinct megafauna species from five functional/taxonomic groups, as well as 8 extant species within these groups for comparison. Perturbing specific demographic rates individually, we tested which species were more demographically susceptible to extinction, and then compared these relative sensitivities to the fossil-derived extinction chronology. Our models show that the macropodiformes were the least demographically susceptible to extinction, followed by carnivores, monotremes, vombatiform herbivores, and large birds. Five of the eight extant species were as or more susceptible than the extinct species. There was no clear relationship between extinction susceptibility and the extinction chronology for any perturbation scenario, while body mass and generation length explained much of the variation in relative risk. Our results reveal that the actual mechanisms leading to the observed extinction chronology were unlikely related to variation in demographic susceptibility per se, but were possibly driven instead by finer-scale variation in climate change and/or human prey choice and relative hunting success.

The mysterious death of Georges Cuvier (1832): An early case of severe Guillain-Barré syndrome?

Although Guillain-Barré syndrome was officially described in 1916, other cases had been reported earlier, such as some cases of Landry's paralysis. This year is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), one of the fathers of comparative anatomy and palaeontology: he died at age 63 from an unknown disease. By reading medical reports about his last days and hours, we conclude Cuvier died from a severe form of Guillain-Barré syndrome. Moreover, we think this observation could be the first complete report of acute polyradiculoneuropathy with pharyngeal-cervical-brachial onset.

The Rhynie chert.

In 1912, William Mackie, a medical practitioner surveying the regional geology west of Aberdeen, Scotland, happened on some unusual rocks (Figure 1) near the village of Rhynie. Dark gray to nearly black and shot through with cylindrical structures a few millimeters in diameter, these rocks differed markedly from the shales and volcanic rocks of local hills. Mackie had discovered the Rhynie chert - paleobotany's most iconic deposit - with its exceptionally preserved fossils that provide a uniquely clear view of early terrestrial ecosystems in statu nascendi. Early research by Robert Kidston and William Lang showed that the cylindrical structures in Rhynie rocks were the axes of early plants, preserved in remarkable cellular detail. A century of subsequent research confirmed that Rhynie provides not only an unparalleled record of early tracheophyte (vascular plant) evolution, but also offers additional paleontological treasures, including animals (mostly arthropods) and microorganisms ranging from fungi, algae, and oomycetes to testate amoebozoans, and even cyanobacteria. A captivating snapshot of life on land more than 400 million years ago, the Rhynie chert provides our earliest and best view of how terrestrial ecosystems came to be.

Series of forms, visual techniques, and quantitative devices: ordering the world between the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino's mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology.

Hidden Concepts in the History and Philosophy of Origins-of-Life Studies: a Workshop Report.

In this review, we describe some of the central philosophical issues facing origins-of-life research and provide a targeted history of the developments that have led to the multidisciplinary field of origins-of-life studies. We outline these issues and developments to guide researchers and students from all fields. With respect to philosophy, we provide brief summaries of debates with respect to (1) definitions (or theories) of life, what life is and how research should be conducted in the absence of an accepted theory of life, (2) the distinctions between synthetic, historical, and universal projects in origins-of-life studies, issues with strategies for inferring the origins of life, such as (3) the nature of the first living entities (the "bottom up" approach) and (4) how to infer the nature of the last universal common ancestor (the "top down" approach), and (5) the status of origins of life as a science. Each of these debates influences the others. Although there are clusters of researchers that agree on some answers to these issues, each of these debates is still open. With respect to history, we outline several independent paths that have led to some of the approaches now prevalent in origins-of-life studies. These include one path from early views of life through the scientific revolutions brought about by Linnaeus (von Linn.), Wöhler, Miller, and others. In this approach, new theories, tools, and evidence guide new thoughts about the nature of life and its origin. We also describe another family of paths motivated by a" circularity" approach to life, which is guided by such thinkers as Maturana & Varela, Gánti, Rosen, and others. These views echo ideas developed by Kant and Aristotle, though they do so using modern science in ways that produce exciting avenues of investigation. By exploring the history of these ideas, we can see how many of the issues that currently interest us have been guided by the contexts in which the ideas were developed. The disciplinary backgrounds of each of these scholars has influenced the questions they sought to answer, the experiments they envisioned, and the kinds of data they collected. We conclude by encouraging scientists and scholars in the humanities and social sciences to explore ways in which they can interact to provide a deeper understanding of the conceptual assumptions, structure, and history of origins-of-life research. This may be useful to help frame future research agendas and bring awareness to the multifaceted issues facing this challenging scientific question.

The role played by Santiago Ramón y Cajal in the development of other disciplines: Biology, Psychology, Anthropology and Archaeology

Santiago Ramón y Cajal is well-known for his work on histology and pathological anatomy, but his scientific restlessness led him to become involved in many other fields, on which his influence also left its mark. His reputation as a histologist has concealed the other disciplines in which he took an active part, particularly after he received the Nobel Prize for Medicine that he shared with Golgi in 1906. Ramón y Cajal was a true humanist who excelled in many fields, today considered as very different disciplines. In some cases, the role he played in the development of these other disciplines has not been studied in all its depth, although his foray into the field of photography has indeed been analysed, for example. More recently, his work as a psychologist has also been published, since Ramón y Cajal came to refute the psychoanalytic theory that Freud was spreading at that time. Less attention has been paid to his involvement in the development of other disciplines that at that time were also included in the field of Natural Sciences, such as Paleontology, Prehistory and Anthropology, and especially as a result of his position as director of the different institutions that he came to preside, especially after receiving the Nobel Prize in Medicine. This, then, is the objective of our contribution. Although he was most notable for his management as president of the Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios (Committee for Extension of Studies and Scientific Research- JAE), we should not forget that he was also president of the Spanish Society of Natural History, director of the Laboratory for Biological Research, and honorary president of the Spanish Society of Anthropology, Ethnography and Prehistory. In all these institutions he played an outstanding role

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All things bleak and bare beneath a brazen sky: practice and place in the analysis of Australopithecus.

The fossilized primate skull known as the Taungs Baby, discovered in South Africa, was put forward in 1925 as a controversial 'missing link' between humans and apes. This essay examines the controversy generated by the fossil, with a focus on practice and the circulation of material objects. Viewing the Taungs story from this perspective provides a new outlook on debates, one that suggests that attention to the importance of place, particularly the ways that specific localities shape scientific practices, is crucial to understanding such controversies. During the 1920s, the fossil itself did not move or circulate from its South African location, a fact that raised methodological concerns in understanding its significance and drew immense criticism from a range of experts. Examining the criticisms regarding the fossil's failure to circulate draws attention to the importance of centers of accumulation in the analysis of hominid fossils. Diverging from existing histories that primarily emphasize the role of theory in paleoanthropological debates, then, this article argues that scientific practice played an important role in the Taungs fossil controversy. Examining this dimension of the debates has broader implications for revealing the underlying imperial assumptions that guided hominid paleontology during the early twentieth century.

Assumptions of authority: the story of Sue the T-rex and controversy over access to fossils.

Although the buying, selling, and trading of fossils has been a principle part of paleontological practice over the centuries, the commercial collection of fossils today has re-emerged into a pervasive and lucrative industry. In the United States, the number of commercial companies driving the legal, and sometimes illegal, selling of fossils is estimated to have doubled since the 1980s, and worries from academic paleontologists over this issue has increased accordingly. Indeed, some view the commercialization of fossils as one of the greatest threats to paleontology today. In this article, I address the story of "Sue"-the largest, most complete, and most expensive Tyrannosaurus rex ever excavated-whose discovery incited a series of high-profile legal battles throughout the 1990s over the question of "Who owns Sue?" Over the course of a decade, various stakeholders from academic paleontologists and fossil dealers to Native Americans, private citizens, and government officials all laid claim to Sue. In exploring this case, I argue that assumptions of authority are responsible for initiating and sustaining debates over fossil access. Here, assumptions of authority are understood as assumptions of ownership, or expertise, or in some cases both. Viewing the story from this perspective illuminates the significance of fossils as boundary objects. It also highlights the process of boundary-work by which individuals and groups constructed or deconstructed borders around Sue (specifically) and fossil access (more generally) to establish their own authority. I draw on science studies scholarship as well as literature in the professionalization, commercialization, and valuation of science to examine how assumptions of authority facilitated one of the most divisive episodes in recent paleontological history and the broader debate on the commercial collection of vertebrate fossil material in the United Sates.