Recent advances in sequencing technologies now permit the analyses of plant DNA from fossil samples (ancient plant DNA, plant aDNA), and thus enable the molecular reconstruction of palaeofloras. Hitherto, ancient frozen soils have proved excellent in preserving DNA molecules, and have thus been the most commonly used source of plant aDNA. However, DNA from soil mainly represents taxa growing a few metres from the sampling point.
Objectives: Reproducing cranial endocasts is a major goal of researchers interested in vertebrate brain evolution. We present a new R software, named endomaker, which allows the automatic extraction of endocasts from skull meshes along with the calculation of its volume. Materials and methods: We applied endomaker on non-primate and primate skulls including the Australopithecus africanus specimen Sts-5. Results: We proved endomaker is faster, more feature-rich and possibly more accurate than competing software.
Ancient DNA from historical and subfossil wood has a great potential to provide new insights into the history of tree populations. However, its extraction and analysis have not become routine, mainly because contamination of the wood with modern plant material can complicate the verification of genetic information.Here, we used sapwood tissue from 22 subfossil pines that were growing c. 13000yr bp in Zurich, Switzerland.
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