Several of the shells he intends to recreate belong to fossil species.

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The site also contains a wealth of Cambrian fossil remains of numerous species, some of them unique.

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Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of California at Berkeley found evidence in data collected from 176 thriving plant species that fossil plants can help scientists determine sources of carbon in the atmosphere hundreds of millions of years ago.

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One of the new specimens, known as KMN-ER 62000, has a face like the type specimen of Homo rudolfensis (the fossil that defines the species, if species it turns out to be), though it seems to be from an adolescent, whereas the type specimen is an adult.

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Other species are embedded in the fossil record of the epochs they belong to.

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Ms Werning therefore decided to trace the phenomenon of rapid growth back as far as she could in the fossil record, by examining the bones of a wide variety of species.

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Prof Barnosky and colleagues compared the rates of known species extinctions in mammals, birds and amphibians during the last five centuries with those estimated from the fossil record during the previous Big Five die-outs of the geological past.

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