Elizabeth Pym wrote a letter in 1742 from the island of Nevis, in the Caribbean Sea, to Peter Collinson in London, describing various botanical samples she was sending him, including two coffee plants. The letter was found inside Volume II of Sir Hans Sloane’s “A Voyage to the Islands Madera …” housed at Oak Spring Garden Library in Virginia. Collinson received both volumes as gifts, with Volume I inscribed to him by Admiral Sir Charles Wager and Volume II inscribed by Sloane. The letter serves as a rare example documenting the collection of botanical specimens by a woman in the New World.

Recent studies have identified numerous pathologies in the cranial domes of pachycephalosaurid dinosaurs. These studies utilized CT images of domes to identify secondary woven bone and sclerosis associated with the pathologies. These features were critical for diagnosing post-traumatic osteomyelitis, which supported the head-butting behaviour hypothesis. However, conventional CT image resolution may not be sufficient to identify secondary woven bone or sclerotic bone in fossil specimens. UALVP 8504 (cf. Foraminacephale brevis), a dome possessing putative bone lesions, was thin-sectioned and micro-CT scanned. Thin sections revealed the lesions are lytic, without any secondary woven bone or sclerosis, falsifying the diagnosis of osteomyelitis. The morphology and histology of the lesions of UALVP 8504 are not diagnostic and resemble both post-traumatic and non-traumatic lesions.  However, UALVP 8504 possesses shifted vascular canals (repositioning via remodeling, which maintains anatomical position throughout ontogeny) that are decoupled from growth (), and drifting osteons (secondary osteons where resorption occurs longitudinally and transversely). These demonstrate that the dome has sustained external mechanical loading, likely resulting from an impact or multiple impacts, consistent with the head-butting hypothesis. These impacts may have damaged overlying soft tissues and formed the lesions along the surface. Therefore, we suspect that the pathologies in UALVP 8504 are post-traumatic.

We examined the evolutionary relationship of the ASPM (abnormal spindle-like microcephaly associated) and MCPH1 (microcephalin-1) genes with brain volume among humans and other primates. We obtained sequences of these genes from 14 simiiform species including hominins. Two phylogenetic analyses of ASPM exon 3 and MCPH1 exons 8 and 11 were performed to maximize taxon sampling or sequence extension to compare the nucleotide substitution and encephalization rates, and examine signals of selection. Further assessment of selection among humans was done through the analysis of non-synonymous and synonymous substitutions (d_N/d_S), and linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns. We found that the accelerated evolution of brain size in hominids, is related to synchronic acceleration in the substitution rates of ASPM and MCPH1, and to signals of positive selection, especially in hominins. The d_N/d_S and LD analyses in Homo detected sites under positive selection and some regions with haplotype blocks at several candidate sites surrounded by blocks in LD-equilibrium. Accelerations and signals of positive selection in ASPM and MCPH1 occurred in different lineages and periods being ASPM more closely related with the brain evolution of hominins. MCPH1 evolved under positive selection in different lineages of the Catarrhini, suggesting independent evolutionary roles of this gene among primates.