A 50-million-year-old, three-dimensionally preserved bat skull supports an early origin for modern echolocation (2023)
Journal Article
Hand, S. J., Maugoust, J., Beck, R. M., & Orliac, M. J. (2023). A 50-million-year-old, three-dimensionally preserved bat skull supports an early origin for modern echolocation. Current Biology, 33(21), 4624-4640. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.043

Bats are among the most recognizable, numerous, and widespread of all mammals. But much of their fossil record is missing, and bat origins remain poorly understood, as do the relationships of early to modern bats. Here, we describe a new early Eocene... Read More about A 50-million-year-old, three-dimensionally preserved bat skull supports an early origin for modern echolocation.

A probable koala from the Oligocene of central Australia provides insights into early diprotodontian evolution (2023)
Journal Article
Crichton, A. I., Beck, R. M. D., Couzens, A. M. C., Worthy, T. H., Camens, A. B., & Prideaux, G. J. (2023). A probable koala from the Oligocene of central Australia provides insights into early diprotodontian evolution. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 14521. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41471-0

Diprotodontians are the morphologically and ecologically most diverse order of marsupials. However, an approximately 30-million-year gap in the Australian terrestrial vertebrate fossil record means that the first half of diprotodontian evolution is u... Read More about A probable koala from the Oligocene of central Australia provides insights into early diprotodontian evolution.

First known extinct feathertail possums (Acrobatidae, Marsupialia): palaeobiodiversity, phylogenetics, palaeoecology and palaeogeography (2023)
Journal Article
Fabian, P. R., Archer, M., Hand, S. J., & Beck, R. M. (in press). First known extinct feathertail possums (Acrobatidae, Marsupialia): palaeobiodiversity, phylogenetics, palaeoecology and palaeogeography. Alcheringa, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/03115518.2023.2242439

Four new fossil feathertail possum species (Marsupialia, Diprotodontia, Phalangerida, Petauroidea, Acrobatidae) are described from late Oligocene to middle Miocene fossil deposits in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, northwestern Queensland. They... Read More about First known extinct feathertail possums (Acrobatidae, Marsupialia): palaeobiodiversity, phylogenetics, palaeoecology and palaeogeography.