News — News

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new invited review paper concerning the application of new imaging techniques in the study of fossil spiders. The paper, written by Dr Paul Selden (University of Kansas) and Dr David Penney (Siri Scientific Press and University of Manchester) was published in the high impact journal Earth-Science Reviews and can be accessed by clicking the link at the end of this short article. These authors have a long history or working together on fossil spiders, which occur as both fossils preserved in amber and as compression fossils in rock. In 2002 they...

Yesterday, Craig Chapman of UKAFH (UK Amateur Fossil Hunters) was interviewed by Wynne Evans on BBC Radio Wales about how to get started with fossil collecting in the UK, and in Wales in particular. The 10 minute interview starts at around 35 mins 45 secs in and can be heard by clicking here (but is only available for the next 29 days). Craig is a co-author of our new title, due out one week today, but advance copies are available via our website. Click the cover below to find out more and see what people are saying about this great...

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Joe Moysiuk from the University of Toronto, Canada, who won a Siri Scientific Press book token as first prize in the Best Poster Competition at the recent Palaeontological Association Annual Meeting held in France. The title and abstract of Joe's contribution was: Hyoliths are Palaeozoic lophophorates*Joseph Moysiuk(1), Martin R. Smith(2) and Jean-Bernard Caron(1,3)1) University of Toronto, Canada2) Durham University, UK3) Royal Ontario Museum, CanadaHyoliths – orthothecids and hyolithids – are abundant and globally distributed Palaeozoic ‘shelly’ fossils.  The phylogenetic position of this group has remained unresolved, largely because of the idiosyncratic...

We now have advance copies of our forthcoming title: A Guide to Fossil Collecting in England and Wales, written by Steve Snowball and Craig Chapman of UKAFH (UK Amateur Fossil Hunters - the UK's largest fossil hunting organization), so we decided to give it a field test by visiting one of the sites described in the book that was local to us here in Rochdale. The site we visited was Newhey Quarry, which we found easily following the directions given in the book. This is a Carboniferous locality famous for its plant fossils with a four (out of five) star...

We are pleased to announce a nice short book review of our recent title Amber Palaeobiology, by David Penney, published in Entomologie heute (November, 2016) and Acta Biologica Benrodis (December 2016): “… the author, a renowned zoologist, arachnologist and authority on amber fossils, gives an overview on recent advances and developments in amber palaeobiology. Further, he develops ideas on future amber research and what might be very promising. He deals with old and new amber deposits, the latter for instance in China (“Palaeodiversity & New Amber Deposits”), with “Microbes in Amber” and then he focuses on “New Imaging Techniques”, ranging...