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Paleoecology of extinct species

Guest Editors:
Michael Pittman: School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, China
Yucheng Wang: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK


BMC Ecology and Evolution called for submissions to our Collection on the paleoecology of extinct species.

Paleoecological studies offer captivating glimpses into long-lost worlds. With recent technological advances, including new imaging and DNA sequencing techniques, researchers are providing an increasingly clear window to the past. BMC Ecology and Evolution launched this Collection to attract papers from this multidisciplinary field.

Meet the Guest Editors

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Michael Pittman: School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, China

Dr. Pittman is an integrative, multi-disciplinary palaeobiologist at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He earned a BSc in Geology, MSc in Geoscience and PhD in Palaeobiology from UCL. His research in dinosaur palaeobiology covers anatomy, systematics, biomechanics, ecology and macroevolution. It is focused on the dinosaur-to-bird transition, including flight origins. He studies exceptionally preserved fossils with multiple methods, including laser-stimulated fluorescence. In addition to the journal’s Editorial Board, Dr. Pittman is an Associate Editor of the systematics journal Cladistics and edited the special volume Pennaraptoran Theropod Dinosaurs: Past Progress and New Frontiers.
 

Yucheng Wang: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Dr. Wang is an evolutionary bio-ecologist interested in applying ancient environmental DNA (eDNA) to understand how ecosystems and species respond and adapt to variable climate, environment, and human activities. His work involves using and developing eDNA metabarcoding, ddPCR, shotgun metagenomics, and target genome capturing, both in wet-lab and bioinformatics, to reconstruct the ecological evolutions, successions, and interactions, as well as the domesticating and evolutionary histories of key species. In addition to his work at the University of Cambridge, he is also a guest researcher at ALPHA, State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System Science, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITPCAS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing, China and associated with the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark.


About the collection

BMC Ecology and Evolution called for submissions to our Collection on the paleoecology of extinct species.

Paleoecological studies offer captivating glimpses into long-lost worlds. With recent technological advances, including new imaging and DNA sequencing techniques, researchers are providing an increasingly clear window to the past. BMC Ecology and Evolution has launched this Collection to attract papers from this multidisciplinary field. The Collection welcomed research:

  • using micro- and macro fossils to study the paleoecology and palaeontology
  • on the interactions between extinct organisms and their environment over a variety of spatial and temporal scales,
  • using histology, imaging, chemical analysis biomechanical modeling techniques and other relevant approaches to unlock information within fossils,
  • using sedimentary ancient DNA (e.g. metabarcoding, metagenomics, and target genome capturing) to gain paleoenvironmental/ paleoecological insights
  • applying niche modeling, species distribution modeling, and spatiotemporal modeling to investigate the distribution ranges and population sizes for extinct species

Image credit: © Daniel Eskridge / Getty Images / iStock

  1. Tooth replacement patterns of early-diverging ornithischians, which are important for understanding the evolution of the highly specialized dental systems in hadrosaurid and ceratopsid dinosaurs, are poorly kn...

    Authors: Jinfeng Hu, Xing Xu, Fuqiang Li and Fenglu Han
    Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2024 24:46
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. Non-avialan theropod dinosaurs had diverse ecologies and varied skull morphologies. Previous studies of theropod cranial morphology mostly focused on higher-level taxa or characteristics associated with herbiv...

    Authors: Yuen Ting Tse, Case Vincent Miller and Michael Pittman
    Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2024 24:39
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. The Middle Jurassic is an important time period for the evolutionary history of marine reptiles as it represented a transitional phase for many clades. Notably, in ichthyosaurs, many early parvipelvian taxa we...

    Authors: Feiko Miedema, Dylan Bastiaans, Torsten M. Scheyer, Christian Klug and Erin E. Maxwell
    Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2024 24:34
    Content type: Research Published on:

  5. Studies on pathological fossil bones have allowed improving the knowledge of physiology and ecology, and consequently the life history of extinct organisms. Among extinct vertebrates, non-avian dinosaurs have ...

    Authors: Mattia A. Baiano, Ignacio A. Cerda, Filippo Bertozzo and Diego Pol
    Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2024 24:6
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. Recent developments, including new imaging and ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) technologies, are providing unprecedented insights into the past, which can also help researchers predict future ecological chan...

    Authors: Michael Pittman and Yucheng Wang
    Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2023 23:59
    Content type: Editorial Published on:

  7. Neck elongation has appeared independently in several tetrapod groups, including giraffes and sauropod dinosaurs on land, birds and pterosaurs in the air, and sauropterygians (plesiosaurs and relatives) in the...

    Authors: Qi-Ling Liu, Long Cheng, Thomas L. Stubbs, Benjamin C. Moon, Michael J. Benton, Chun-Bo Yan and Li Tian
    Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2023 23:44
    Content type: Research Published on:

  8. Modern baleen whales are unique as large-sized filter feeders, but their roles were replicated much earlier by diverse marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. Here, we investigate convergence in skull morphology betw...

    Authors: Zi-Chen Fang, Jiang-Li Li, Chun-Bo Yan, Ya-Rui Zou, Li Tian, Bi Zhao, Michael J. Benton, Long Cheng and Xu-Long Lai
    Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2023 23:36
    Content type: Research Published on:

  10. According to a longstanding paradigm, aquatic amniotes, including the Mesozoic marine reptile group Ichthyopterygia, give birth tail-first because head-first birth leads to increased asphyxiation risk of the f...

    Authors: Feiko Miedema, Nicole Klein, Daniel G. Blackburn, P. Martin Sander, Erin E. Maxwell, Eva M. Griebeler and Torsten M. Scheyer
    Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2023 23:12
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Paleoecology of extinct species" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Guest Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Guest Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.