News & Comment

Life emerged from and amidst non-living phenomena that already possessed some of the hallmarks now used four billion years later to recognize fossil organisms. It may be next to impossible to distinguish the earliest signs of life against this background. What can we still learn from fossil-like materials on the early Earth and elsewhere?

Humans have influenced global fire activity for millennia and will continue to do so into the future. Given the long-term interaction between humans and fire, we propose a collaborative research agenda linking archaeology and fire science that emphasizes the socioecological histories and consequences of anthropogenic fire in the development of fire management strategies today.

There is a range of approaches to improving peer review, and at this journal we encourage many of them.

Researcher who studied fundamental questions about sexual selection, and an inspiring and kind colleague and friend.

Primate palaeontologist and passionate advocate for diversity in human origins research.

Data on tropical forests are in high demand. But ground forest measurements are hard to sustain and the people who make them are extremely disadvantaged compared to those who use them. We propose a new approach to forest data that focuses on the needs of data originators, and ensures users and funders contribute properly.

Ecologists are embracing the use of forestry data, offering the chance to move beyond decades of division between disciplines.