We here describe the first Neogene record of the squamate clade Mabuyidae. Although this clade has a cosmopolitan distribution today, no pre-Quarternary fossil record of these reptiles has so far been documented. The material comes from the locality Solnechnodolsk (Russia) and is dated to the late Miocene (MN 13). Although it comprises only jaw elements, it constitutes the first evidence of the occurrence of fossil skinks around the area of the Black Sea. The material...

The support of research process in information practices has long attracted attention of information science, especially in terms of digital scholarship and science 2.0. However, there is a need to manage large volumes of digital data in science and new information strategies of young researchers should be designed. The goal of this paper is to report on research of information needs of doctoral students in contexts of information support off digital research data and processes....

Institutional repositories are regarded as one of major conceptual and technological revolutions in the field of scholarly publishing, enabling quick and widespread dissemination of research results. In order for the repositories to become this useful and powerful tool, it is necessary that they get full political and financial support from the academic institutions’ managements as well as a wide acceptance from the academics, university teachers and researchers. At the Comenius University in Bratislava, the oldest...

The origin of amniotes was a key event in vertebrate evolution, enabling tetrapods to break their ties with water and invade terrestrial environments. Two pivotal clades of early tetrapods, the diadectomorphs and the seymouriamorphs, have played an unsurpassed role in debates about the ancestry of amniotes for over a century, but their skeletal morphology has provided conflicting evidence for their affinities. Using high-resolution X-ray microcomputed tomography, we reveal the three-dimensional architecture of the well preserved...