Hasil untuk "Fossil man. Human paleontology"

Nil-Jana Akpinar, Sandeep Avula, CJ Lee et al.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used to generate and edit scientific abstracts, yet their integration into academic writing raises questions about trust, quality, and disclosure. Despite growing adoption, little is known about how readers perceive LLM-generated summaries and how these perceptions influence evaluations of scientific work. This paper presents a mixed-methods survey experiment investigating whether readers with ML expertise can distinguish between human- and LLM-generated abstracts, how actual and perceived LLM involvement affects judgments of quality and trustworthiness, and what orientations readers adopt toward AI-assisted writing. Our findings show that participants struggle to reliably identify LLM-generated content, yet their beliefs about LLM involvement significantly shape their evaluations. Notably, abstracts edited by LLMs are rated more favorably than those written solely by humans or LLMs. We also identify three distinct reader orientations toward LLM-assisted writing, offering insights into evolving norms and informing policy around disclosure and acceptable use in scientific communication.

Clément Coiffard, Haytham El Atfy, Mona H. Darwish et al.

Abstract The Bahariya Formation of the northern Western Desert, Egypt, is well-known for its plentiful and diverse vertebrate fossil assemblages, especially dinosaurs, and also eminent for its rich fossil macroflora. Unraveling the taxonomic and climatic inferences of this macroflora will undoubtedly provide essential insights into reconstructing this significant ecosystem and understanding plant life in the region during the early Cenomanian period. In this study, a taxonomic revision of the recovered fossil leaves, a crucial aspect of our research, enables the identification of fourteen morphotypes closely resembling those recently recovered from adjacent profiles of the Bahariya Formation. This taxonomic revision significantly contributes to our understanding of the Cenomanian floras from Egypt and their Neo-Tethys counterparts. The results from the current macrofloral record largely confirm previous data regarding the same ancient vegetation preserved in the palynological record. Moreover, sedimentological investigations, including petrography and X-ray diffraction of rock samples from the type section of the Bahariya Formation in the Gebel El Dist profile, a section closely similar to the location where the leaf fossils were recovered—play a crucial role in supporting climatic models, thereby providing reassurance and confidence in the research findings.

Alison J. Rowe, Isabelle Rouget, Farid Saleh et al.

Abstract The Upper Cretaceous Konservat-Lagerstätten of Lebanon—the Santonian-aged Sahel Aalma (Sahel Alma), and Cenomanian-aged Hjoula (Hadjoula, Hgula) and Haqel (Hakel, Haqil)—are world-renowned for their exceptional preservation of fossil organisms. Taphonomic studies are still quite rare at these sites and have typically focused either on preservational differences between organisms or comparisons with other Konservat-Lagerstätten. Questions regarding preservational variation (whether each locality in these limestones preserves the same tissues, with the same composition, and at the same high level of occurrence, for example) have yet to be answered. Such preservation variability has implications for a variety of palaeontological analyses, including systematics, phylogenetic character coding, and palaeoecological interpretation. Here, we combine multiple imaging techniques to explore the preservation of a large sample of a single cephalopod species, Dorateuthis syriaca (n = 71). This taxon (order Octobrachia) occurs in abundance at each of the three main gladius-bearing coleoid localities and spans c.10 Ma. The observed presence or absence of tissues and organs was used to constrain the preservation potential in each of the localities, and further statistical analyses were conducted to identify if differences between localities were significant. Our results show that Haqel and Hjoula are likely to preserve more soft tissues than Sahel Aalma, mainly due to a higher occurrence of circulatory and respiratory tissues. These data highlight the need to focus on local locality conditions when studying exceptional preservation, despite the limestone composition of each of the Konservat-Lagerstätten.

BAI Wei-Peng, DONG Wei, ZHANG Li-Min, LIU Wen-Hui

Monsoon has an important impact on the development of vegetation that subsequently has significant influence on the evolution of plant consumers. The diversities of forest dwellers or herbivores follow the evolution of the vegetation, and it is therefore possible to take such diversities as forest or vegetation dynamic proxies. The present work selected 36 Pleistocene faunas of large mammals from monsoon-dominated provinces in China as materials and calculated the diversities of forest dwellers and herbivores with different approaches, as well as the consensus gradient coefficients of all the selected faunas in different flora regionalized subkingdoms. The results show that with the evolution and transitions of the East Asian summer and winter monsoon intensities, the forest vitality decreased while steppe vitality increased gradually in a fluctuated way from the Early Pleistocene to the Late Pleistocene, especially in the provinces north of the Qinling-Huaihe Line. The analyses of such diversities of the faunas can help to determine the forest dynamic proxies. Moreover, the correlation of such proxies to loess-paleosol sequences and marine isotope stages can in turn help to improve the accuracy of dating fauna ages and paleoenvironment reconstruction.

Štěpán Manda, Vojtěch Turek

Muscle scars, embryonic shell, colour pattern and intraspecific variation are known together in a very limited numberof straight shelled cephalopods, leading to uncertainty in the classification of the subclass Orthoceratoidea. Thenewly described genus Lepidoceras from the Silurian of Bohemia, interpreted as a demersal orthoceratid similar to Kionoceras, shows all relevant diagnostic characters. The earliest late Wenlock populations of Lepidoceras have aweakly curved endogastric shell, but the shell becomes increasingly more curved throughout the Ludlow. The sculptureis characterized by distinctive longitudinal lirae or ridges, the number of which is variable and maintained duringontogeny. The embryonic shell of Lepidoceras is one of the largest in orthoceratids; it is conical or weakly curved inshape beginning with a smooth non-accretion initial shell. Hatching is manifested by growth walls in some specimens;hatchlings were apparently demersal. Adults are usually characterized by mature modifications of the shell: septalcrowding and shell wall thickening. A high proportion of adult specimens indicates low mortality in palaeopopulations.Healed repairs indicate a lower predation pressure, which decreases after the juvenile stage. Extensive shell repair injuveniles demonstrates high regenerative capacity. Orthoceratomorph muscle scars found only in adults show a pairof dorsal retractor imprints that gradually expanded laterally. The colour pattern consists of irregular transverse bands,which have never been detected in orthoceratids before. The pattern, which is similar to that in curved oncocerids, isprobably an expression of adaptive convergence of this feature in both groups. Shell pathologies, which have beenobserved in juvenile orthoceratids for the first time, are rare; an extensive pathology in a mature specimen illustrateslimit of survival in orthoceratids. Lepidoceras is an example of a demersal orthoceratid entering a niche inhabitedpredominantly by multiceratoids.

Simona Bekeraitė, Robertas Stankevič, Ivona Juchnevičiūtė et al.

On multi-million-year timescales, the climate system of the Earth exhibits complex wandering behaviour. We investigate the evolutionary impacts of long-term climate change by analysing the dynamics of Cenozoic mammal evolution, looking for the presence of state transitions, stable equilibrium states and their association with long-term climate evolution. We perform Bayesian modelling of Artiodactyla, Carnivora, and Perissodactyla evolutionary histories. We then use recurrence plot analysis of the species richness time series, identifying the main transitions and regimes in large mammal evolution. Joint recurrence plots of diversity-Cenozoic oxygen isotope record as well as recurrence quantification analysis are used to further investigate the coupled dynamics of climate and mammal evolution. We find that several transitions between different states of the long-term climate evolution correspond to subsequent transitions and multistable states of diversity. The evidence for several climate transitions is recovered from joint recurrence states of diversity time series alone, indicating coordinated behaviour of three different mammalian orders and climate. The diversity fluctuations increase in amplitude during the Coolhouse regime in Oligocene and Miocene, with the diversity evolution starting an unprecedented decline during the Icehouse. Our results suggest that mammal diversity evolution has been coupled with the dynamical state of paleoclimate on multi-million-year timescales.

Chengke Liu, Wei Xu

Developing human-controllable artificial intelligence (AI) and achieving meaningful human control (MHC) has become a vital principle to address these challenges, ensuring ethical alignment and effective governance in AI. MHC is also a critical focus in human-centered AI (HCAI) research and application. This chapter systematically examines MHC in AI, articulating its foundational principles and future trajectory. MHC is not simply the right to operate, but the unity of human understanding, intervention, and the traceablity of responsibility in AI decision-making, which requires technological design, AI governance, and humans to play a role together. MHC ensures AI autonomy serves humans without constraining technological progress. The mode of human control needs to match the levels of technology, and human supervision should balance the trust and doubt of AI. For future AI systems, MHC mandates human controllability as a prerequisite, requiring: (1) technical architectures with embedded mechanisms for human control; (2) human-AI interactions optimized for better access to human understanding; and (3) the evolution of AI systems harmonizing intelligence and human controllability. Governance must prioritize HCAI strategies: policies balancing innovation and risk mitigation, human-centered participatory frameworks transcending technical elite dominance, and global promotion of MHC as a universal governance paradigm to safeguard HCAI development. Looking ahead, there is a need to strengthen interdisciplinary research on the controllability of AI systems, enhance ethical and legal awareness among stakeholders, moving beyond simplistic technology design perspectives, focus on the knowledge construction, complexity interpretation, and influencing factors surrounding human control. By fostering MHC, the development of human-controllable AI can be further advanced, delivering HCAI systems.

Chengbo Zheng, Tim Miller, Alina Bialkowski et al.

High stakes decision-making often requires a continuous interplay between evolving evidence and shifting hypotheses, a dynamic that is not well supported by current AI decision support systems. In this paper, we introduce a mixed-initiative framework for AI assisted decision making that is grounded in the data-frame theory of sensemaking and the evaluative AI paradigm. Our approach enables both humans and AI to collaboratively construct, validate, and adapt hypotheses. We demonstrate our framework with an AI-assisted skin cancer diagnosis prototype that leverages a concept bottleneck model to facilitate interpretable interactions and dynamic updates to diagnostic hypotheses.

Ruiqi Wang, Jiyu Guo, Cuiyun Gao et al.

Recently, large language models (LLMs) have been deployed to tackle various software engineering (SE) tasks like code generation, significantly advancing the automation of SE tasks. However, assessing the quality of these LLM-generated code and text remains challenging. The commonly used Pass@k metric necessitates extensive unit tests and configured environments, demands a high labor cost, and is not suitable for evaluating LLM-generated text. Conventional metrics like BLEU, which measure only lexical rather than semantic similarity, have also come under scrutiny. In response, a new trend has emerged to employ LLMs for automated evaluation, known as LLM-as-a-judge. These LLM-as-a-judge methods are claimed to better mimic human assessment than conventional metrics without relying on high-quality reference answers. Nevertheless, their exact human alignment in SE tasks remains unexplored. In this paper, we empirically explore LLM-as-a-judge methods for evaluating SE tasks, focusing on their alignment with human judgments. We select seven LLM-as-a-judge methods that utilize general-purpose LLMs, alongside two LLMs specifically fine-tuned for evaluation. After generating and manually scoring LLM responses on three recent SE datasets of code translation, code generation, and code summarization, we then prompt these methods to evaluate each response. Finally, we compare the scores generated by these methods with human evaluation. The results indicate that output-based methods reach the highest Pearson correlation of 81.32 and 68.51 with human scores in code translation and generation, achieving near-human evaluation, noticeably outperforming ChrF++, one of the best conventional metrics, at 34.23 and 64.92. Such output-based methods prompt LLMs to output judgments directly, and exhibit more balanced score distributions that resemble human score patterns. Finally, we provide...

Nils Mandischer, Alexander Atanasyan, Ulrich Dahmen et al.

The digital twin of humans is a relatively new concept. While many diverse definitions, architectures, and applications exist, a clear picture is missing on what, in fact, makes a human digital twin. Within this context, researchers and industrial use-case owners alike are unaware about the market potential of the - at the moment - rather theoretical construct. In this work, we draw a holistic vision of the human digital twin, and derive the specification of this holistic human digital twin in form of requirements, stakeholders, and users. For each group of users, we define exemplary applications that fall into the six levels of functionality: store, analyze, personalize, predict, control, and optimize. The functionality levels facilitate an abstraction of abilities of the human digital twin. From the manifold applications, we discuss three in detail to showcase the feasibility of the abstraction levels and the analysis of stakeholders and users. Based on the deep discussion, we derive a comprehensive list of requirements on the holistic human digital twin. These considerations shall be used as a guideline for research and industries for the implementation of human digital twins, particularly in context of reusability in multiple target applications.

Stephan N. F. Spiekman, Martín D. Ezcurra, Adam Rytel et al.

Abstract Some of the earliest members of the archosaur-lineage (i.e., non-archosauriform archosauromorphs) are characterised by an extremely elongated neck. Recent fossil discoveries from the Guanling Formation (Middle Triassic) of southern China have revealed a dramatic increase in the known ecomorphological diversity of these extremely long-necked archosauromorphs, including the fully marine and viviparous Dinocephalosaurus orientalis. These recent discoveries merit a reinvestigation of enigmatic Triassic diapsid fossils from contemporaneous European deposits housed in historical collections. Here, we provide a redescription of Trachelosaurus fischeri, represented by a single, disarticulated specimen first described in 1918. Due to its unique morphology, which includes short, bifurcating cervical ribs, and a high presacral vertebral count, this taxon has been referred to either as a “protorosaurian” archosauromorph or a sauropterygian. Our revision clearly shows that Trachelosaurus represents the first unambiguous Dinocephalosaurus-like archosauromorph known from outside the Guanling Formation. Our finding has important systematic implications. Trachelosauridae Abel, 1919 represents the senior synonym for the recently identified Dinocephalosauridae Spiekman, Fraser and Scheyer, 2021. Based on our phylogenetic analyses, which employ two extensive datasets, we also corroborate previous findings that tanystropheids and trachelosaurids represent two families within a larger monophyletic group among non-crocopodan archosauromorphs, which is here named Tanysauria (clade nov.). Trachelosauridae is minimally composed of Trachelosaurus fischeri, Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, Pectodens zhenyuensis, and Austronaga minuta, but one of our analyses also found a probably taxonomically broader clade that may also include Gracilicollum latens and Fuyuansaurus acutirostris. Trachelosaurus fischeri considerably expands the known spatial and temporal range of Trachelosauridae to the earliest Anisian and the Central European Basin. Our findings add to the growing evidence for the presence of a diverse group of fully marine reptiles during the Middle Triassic among Tanysauria. These trachelosaurids possess flipper-like limbs, high vertebral counts, and elongate necks, thus superficially resembling long-necked Jurassic and Cretaceous plesiosaurs in some regards.

Till Hielscher, Lukas Heuer, Frederik Wulle et al.

Predictive planning is a key capability for robots to efficiently and safely navigate populated environments. Particularly in densely crowded scenes, with uncertain human motion predictions, predictive path planning, and control can become expensive to compute in real time due to the curse of dimensionality. With the goal of achieving pro-active and legible robot motion in shared environments, in this paper we present HuMAN-MPC, a computationally efficient algorithm for Human Motion Aware Navigation using fast embedded Model Predictive Control. The approach consists of a novel model predictive control (MPC) formulation that leverages a fast state-of-the-art optimization backend based on a sequential quadratic programming real-time iteration scheme while also providing feasibility monitoring. Our experiments, in simulation and on a fully integrated ROS-based platform, show that the approach achieves great scalability with fast computation times without penalizing path quality and efficiency of the resulting avoidance behavior.

Byunghwee Lee, Rachith Aiyappa, Yong-Yeol Ahn et al.

Beliefs form the foundation of human cognition and decision-making, guiding our actions and social connections. A model encapsulating beliefs and their interrelationships is crucial for understanding their influence on our actions. However, research on belief interplay has often been limited to beliefs related to specific issues and relied heavily on surveys. We propose a method to study the nuanced interplay between thousands of beliefs by leveraging an online user debate data and mapping beliefs onto a neural embedding space constructed using a fine-tuned large language model (LLM). This belief space captures the interconnectedness and polarization of diverse beliefs across social issues. Our findings show that positions within this belief space predict new beliefs of individuals and estimate cognitive dissonance based on the distance between existing and new beliefs. This study demonstrates how LLMs, combined with collective online records of human beliefs, can offer insights into the fundamental principles that govern human belief formation.

MICHAEL P. TAYLOR, MATHEW J. WEDEL

Pneumatic dorsal ribs are known for many sauropods, but to date costal pneumaticity has received relatively little attention. In particular, the pneumatic ribs of the holotype specimen of Brachiosaurus altithorax have been largely overlooked, although they present a unique configuration of pneumatic features. One rib, with a pneumatic foramen some distance down the shaft, was briefly described and illustrated in the early 20th century by Elmer S. Riggs. A second rib with a pneumatic foramen in the tuberculum of the rib has not previously been described or illustrated. This previously undescribed foramen is similar in location to those in some dorsal ribs of Brontosaurus excelsus and Giraffatitan brancai, but differs from them in both size and shape. The contrasting sites of costal pneumaticity in the holotype individual of Brachiosaurus altithorax emphasize the generally opportunistic mode of postcranial pneumatization, in both sauropods and other ornithodirans, but conform to models of pneumatization following vascularization.

MARC PHILIPPE

The growth rings of fossil wood provide valuable data on tree ecology. As many of the parameters controlling width are climatic, it is tempting to use these rings as an indicator of climate. This is what has been done, with great success, by dendrochronological studies of archaeological wood. For wood dating from before the Pleistocene, however, the task is more uncertain. Since around 1980, researchers have relied mainly on a statistical parameter, the mean sensitivity, an average of the difference in width between two consecutive rings. However, there has never been a critical examination of utility and significance of this parameter for fossil wood. I compiled 63 studies that used mean sensitivity for palaeoclimatological inferences. An analysis of this compilation is presented here. Despite its ups and downs since the 1980’s, mean sensitivity is increasingly used by palaeobotanists. However, it has been used in very different ways. The values obtained for the same fossil can vary greatly from one researcher to another, but also according to the radii of the woody axis considered. Within fossil wood assemblages, average sensitivity varies widely, but rarely consistently. Overall, mean sensitivity values are continuously, normally and unimodally distributed, and therefore are unsuitable for characterising discrete climate classes. Finally, it seems that the most recent studies are also the least cautious when it comes to interpreting the values obtained.

Davide Ferrari, Andrea Pupa, Alberto Signoretti et al.

The new industrial settings are characterized by the presence of human and robots that work in close proximity, cooperating in performing the required job. Such a collaboration, however, requires to pay attention to many aspects. Firstly, it is crucial to enable a communication between this two actors that is natural and efficient. Secondly, the robot behavior must always be compliant with the safety regulations, ensuring always a safe collaboration. In this paper, we propose a framework that enables multi-channel communication between humans and robots by leveraging multimodal fusion of voice and gesture commands while always respecting safety regulations. The framework is validated through a comparative experiment, demonstrating that, thanks to multimodal communication, the robot can extract valuable information for performing the required task and additionally, with the safety layer, the robot can scale its speed to ensure the operator's safety.

Sofia Yfantidou, Marios Constantinides, Dimitris Spathis et al.

This paper explores the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) fairness and mobile human-computer interaction (MobileHCI). Through a comprehensive analysis of MobileHCI proceedings published between 2017 and 2022, we first aim to understand the current state of algorithmic fairness in the community. By manually analyzing 90 papers, we found that only a small portion (5%) thereof adheres to modern fairness reporting, such as analyses conditioned on demographic breakdowns. At the same time, the overwhelming majority draws its findings from highly-educated, employed, and Western populations. We situate these findings within recent efforts to capture the current state of algorithmic fairness in mobile and wearable computing, and envision that our results will serve as an open invitation to the design and development of fairer ubiquitous technologies.

KAI R.K. JÄGER, PAMELA G. GILL, THOMAS MARTIN et al.

The South African Early Jurassic morganucodontan Erythrotherium is considered by some authors to be potentially synonymous with Morganucodon, due to similar tooth morphology. However, despite their similar dental morphology, the occlusal pattern of Erythrotherium parringtoni has been described as embrasure occlusion, close to the mode of Megazostrodon rudnerae, rather than that of Morganucodon. In this study the molars of Erythrotherium were re-examined and the two alternative occlusal hypotheses were tested using the Occlusal Fingerprint Analyser (OFA). Morphological comparison of the molars of Erythrotherium parringtoni to those of Morganucodon watsoni showed similarities in cusp height and shape in lingual/buccal views, but the molars and individual cusps of Erythrotherium parringtoni are considerably narrower linguo-buccally, and more gracile. With cusps a and c close together in Erythrotherium parringtoni, cusp positioning differs from that of Morganucodon watsoni and shows similarities to the pattern in Megazostrodon rudnerae. Also, the upper molars of Erythrotherium parringtoni are aligned in a straight row and lack the angle, relative to the longitudinal axis, between the first and second upper molars that is present in Morganucodon watsoni. This results in embrasure occlusion being the only viable occlusal mode for Erythrotherium parringtoni, which was confirmed by the OFA analysis. A Morganucodon-like occlusion would allow only the main cusps a/A to contact their antagonists and thus major gaps would be present, causing considerable reduction of functionality of the dentition. Based on the morphological evidence and the differing occlusal mode, the perpetuation of Erythrotherium parringtoni as a separate genus is confirmed.

Oscar Alfredo Alcober, Ricardo Néstor Martínez

En el año 1964 se creó por ley provincial el Museo de Ciencias Naturales de San Juan. Esta ley fue una reacción al drenaje de fósiles que se sacaban de la provincia, después del descubrimiento científico de Ischigualasto en 1958, porque no había en San Juan un repositorio habilitado. Sancionada la ley, el Museo solo existió en el papel por varios años hasta que un grupo de académicos entusiastas y algunos coleccionistas donaron sus piezas geológicas, paleontológicas y biológicas a la provincia. Luego, la Dirección de Turismo le dio forma de Museo cediendo el primer piso de su edificio. Aquí se cuenta todo el periplo del Museo desde su humilde creación: traspaso a la Universidad Nacional de San Juan, primeras colecciones, el primer paleovertebradólogo sanjuanino por adopción, el “gringo” William Sill, incorporación de investigadores, el redescubrimiento de Ischigualasto, el trabajo con la Fundación Earthwatch, descubrimiento de yacimientos, exhibiciones que recorrieron el mundo y finalmente, el merecido emplazamiento en edificio propio. Se ha descripto la historia como una hazaña humana, porque una institución es las personas que la hicieron y las que hoy la sostienen. Personas que a su paso dieron lo mejor de sí mismos, e hicieron un apasionado y sacrificado esfuerzo para lograr todo lo que es y lo que representa para San Juan su Museo de Ciencias Naturales.

Aniket Mitra, Rakhi Dutta, Kalyan Halder

Abstract The early Eocene greenhouse Earth experienced several transient global warming events, indicated by sharp negative excursions in the stable isotope ratios of carbon and oxygen. A huge amount of CO2, enriched with 12C, was released in the ocean–atmosphere system leading to warming. The Paleocene–Eocene boundary is demarcated by the most significant and well-known hyperthermal event, Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM). The PETM is documented to be accompanied by a transgression. The later hyperthermals are relatively less studied. Information on the hyperthermals from the palaeo-tropical basins are relatively few. Here, we present a high-resolution litho-, bio- and isotope–stratigraphic analysis of the early Eocene succession from the Kutch Basin, western India. Stable isotopes of carbon and oxygen were analysed from sediments (δ13Corg) and mollusc shells (δ13Ccarb and δ18Ocarb). The succession, prevailingly with lignite, along with carbonaceous black shale and plenty of fossil plant remains, is primarily a product of terrestrial environment. A pronounced marine transgression, characterised by marine mollusc bearing glauconitic shale in the middle of the succession, indicates a coastal transitional setting between the ocean and land. The δ13C curve of organic carbon reveals five negative excursions, which are identified as the PETM, Eocene thermal maximum 2 (ETM2)/H1, H2, I1 and I2 in ascending order. The hyperthermal pair of ETM2–H2 corresponds with the marine interval. δ13Ccarb and δ18Ocarb from the middle part of the succession reveal concomitant negative excursions. The association between these hyperthermals and transgression appears to be regionally and globally valid, which strongly suggests a causal link between them.