Search publications of the members of the Royal Belgian institute of natural Sciences
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Thatchtelithichnus on a Pliocene grey whale mandible and barnacles as possible tracemakers
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Comprendre le droit de la protection de la nature. La dimension scientifique du droit de la protection de la nature.
- Cette vidéo a pour objet de montrer un mouvement continu de scientifisation du droit de la nature. Elle s’articule autour d’un dialogue entre, d’une part, les sciences naturelles et, d’autre part, les règles juridiques. A la suite d'un interview sur les enjeux de la conservation de la biodiversité, les différentes approches conceptuelles de la conservation sont abordées par l'entremise d'une série d'interviews se déroulent à l'Institut royal des sciences naturelles de Belgique. Sont ainsi abordés: - l’approche par espèce, -l’approche par type d’habitat naturel, - le concept de réseau écologique, - l’approche par écosystème.
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CEBioS capacity building programme in the Congo Basin.
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Jaarverslag 2020 van het Leopold III-Fonds voor Natuuronderzoek en Natuurbehoud / Rapport annuel 2020 du Fonds Léopold III pour l'Exploration et la Conservation de la Nature
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Tidal inlets in the Anthropocene: Geomorphology and benthic habitats of the Chioggia inlet, Venice Lagoon (Italy)
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A new Late Miocene beaked whale (Cetacea, Odontoceti) from the Pisco Formation, and a revised age for the fossil Ziphiidae of Peru
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Description of a new species of Platypalpus of the candicans - cursitans subgroup from the Peloponnesus, Greece (Diptera: Hybotidae, Tachydromiinae)
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Description of a peculiar new species of the genus Platypalpus Macquart, 1827 (Diptera: Hybotidae) from the Caucasus
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Two new Drapetis species (Diptera: Hybotidae) from Sweden
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Review of two Tonnoir moth fly species, overlooked for a century (Diptera: Psychodidae: Psychodinae)
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New insights into the marine contribution to ancient Easter Islanders' diet
- Easter Island (or Rapa Nui), internationally renowned for its megalithic statues, is the most isolated inhabited island of the Pacific. Archaeological surveys undertaken fromthe end of the 19th century led to the discovery of the remains of several hundred human individuals. The majority were buried in monuments (funerary stone platform called ahu) or in caves. This paper presents a study of the ancient Easter Islanders' diet through carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis of human tooth and bone collagen and, more particularly, evaluates the impact of gender, age, social status and location of burials. The 125 studied individuals are from 16 sites, which date mainly fromthe 17th to the 19th centuries. This anthropological material is housed at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural sciences and the Father Sebastián Englert Anthropological Museum of Easter Island. One hundred and seven individuals showed well-preserved collagen. The stable isotope data provide new information on ancient Easter Islander dietary habits. They demonstrate gender disparity in access to food resources and show that children were breastfed until 3 years of age. Furthermore, the isotopic signatures cluster according to the place of burial (ahu) indicating family dietary specificities. Finally, our study reveals influences of social status on food intake: individuals from Ahu Nau Nau, which is said to be the royal ahu, display the highest nitrogen and carbon isotope values. A greater consumption of marine products may explain this distinction.
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Offshore renewable energy development in the Belgian part of the North Sea
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Executive summary: Empirical evidence inspiring priority monitoring, research and management
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Documentering van de tijdelijke ontsluiting 'groeve Ampe te Egem, Pittem'
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The thermal properties of the Mercia Mudstone Group
- The Mercia Mudstone Group (MMG) crops out extensively across England and Wales and its thermal properties are required for the design of infrastructure such as ground source heating and cooling schemes and electrical cable conduits. Data from the literature and new data from a borehole core have been compiled to generate an updated range of thermal conductivities related to rock type and the lithostratigraphy. These indicate a total range in saturated vertical thermal conductivity of 1.67– 3.24 W m−1 K−1, comprising 1.67–2.81 W m−1 K−1 for mudstones, 2.12–2.41 W m−1 K−1 for siltstones and 2.3–3.24 W m−1 K−1 for sandstones. These data are all from measurements on samples and there will be uncertainty when considering the thermal properties of the rock mass owing to micro- and macrostructural features. Geometric mean modelling of thermal conductivity based on mineralogy has overestimated the thermal conductivity. Correction factors for the modelled thermal conductivities have been calculated to allow a first estimate of MMG thermal conductivities when only mineralogical data are available. Measured thermal diffusivities from the borehole core were in the range of 0.63–3.07 × 10−6 m2 s−1 and are the first measured thermal diffusivities to be reported for the MMG.
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Morphological evidence for early dog domestication in the European Pleistocene: New evidence from a randomization approach to group differences
- The antiquity of the wolf/dog domestication has been recently pushed back in time from the Late Upper Paleolithic (~14,000 years ago) to the Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP; ~36,000 years ago). Some authors questioned this early dog domestication claiming that the putative (EUP) Paleolithic dogs fall within the morphological range of recent wolves. In this study, we reanalyzed a data set of large canid skulls using unbalanced‐ and balanced‐randomized discriminant analyses to assess whether the putative Paleolithic dogs are morphologically unique or whether they represent a subsample of the wolf morpho‐population. We evaluated morphological differences between 96 specimens of the 4 a priori reference groups (8 putative Paleolithic dogs, 41 recent northern dogs, 7 Pleistocene wolves, and 40 recent northern wolves) using discriminant analysis based on 5 ln‐transformed raw and allometrically size‐adjusted cranial measurements. Putative Paleolithic dogs are classified with high accuracies (87.5 and 100.0%, cross‐validated) and randomization experiment suggests that these classification rates cannot be exclusively explained by the small and uneven sample sizes of reference groups. It indicates that putative Upper Paleolithic dogs may represent a discrete canid group with morphological signs of domestication (a relatively shorter skull and wider palate and braincase) that distinguish them from sympatric Pleistocene wolves. The present results add evidence to the view that these specimens could represent incipient Paleolithic dogs that were involved in daily activities of European Upper Paleolithic forager groups.
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Antarctic ecosystem responses following ice-shelf collapse and iceberg calving: Science review and future research
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La pointe de lance d’Ivoz-Ramet (commune de Flémalle, prov. de Liège) revisitée. Une armature du début du Bronze final draguée dans la Meuse.
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EVOSHEEP: the makeup of sheep breeds in the ancient Near East
- The EVOSHEEP project combines archaeozoology, geometric morphometrics and genetics to study archaeological sheep assemblages dating from the sixth to the first millennia BC in eastern Africa, the Levant, the Anatolian South Caucasus, the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia. The project aims to understand changes in the physical appearance and phenotypic characteristics of sheep and how these related to the appearance of new breeds and the demand for secondary products to supply the textile industry.
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Eurhinodelphinids from the early Miocene of Peru: first unambiguous records of these hyper-longirostrine dolphins outside the North Atlantic realm
