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© 2025. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the "License"). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Using 12 104 publications from 2014 to 2023 in the DeepBone database, this study employs bibliometric methods, including full-text latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) modelling, co-occurrence network analysis and geographic mapping With ArcGIS, to examine three key aspects of vertebrate palaeontology development: geographic distribution of newly established taxa, gender demographics among researchers and research trends. Gender data were analysed using automated tools with manual verification to ensure accuracy, while methodological evolution was investigated through systematic text mining and classification. Among 8336 newly established taxa, mammals (34.72%) and fishes (29.76%) dominate, followed by reptiles (25.34%), birds (7.39%) and amphibians (2.80%). Geographic analysis reveals significant regional disparities, with the USA (13.50%) and China (13.32%) contributing the most, while Africa and Oceania remain under-represented (less than 10%). Gender analysis indicates a gradual increase in female representation from 22.78 to 27.20% over the decade, highlighting the imperative to address gender disparities in vertebrate palaeontology, thereby advancing equity in alignment with UNESCO Sustainable Development Goal 5. LDA topic modelling identifies 15 distinct research topics, encompassing evolutionary biology, cranial and skeletal morphology, dinosaur-bird evolution and human evolution, while co-occurrence analysis highlights the evolution of research methodologies, revealing strong interconnections between phylogenetic analysis (15%), traditional morphological analysis (12%) and high-resolution imaging techniques (9%).

Details

Title
A decade of vertebrate palaeontology research: global taxa distribution, gender dynamics and evolving methodologies
Author
Wang, Haohan 1 ; Sterli, Juliana 2 ; Dupret, Vincent 3 ; Blom, Henning 3 ; Berta, Annalisa 4 ; Turner, Susan; Han, Daoming; Xu, Luyan; Pan, Zhaohui

 Research Center of Natural History and Culture, Qujing Normal University, Qujing, Yunnan, People's Republic of China 
 Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio (MEF), Trelew, Argentina 
 Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden 
 Department of Biology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA 
Pages
1-19
Section
Research
Publication year
2025
Publication date
2025
Publisher
The Royal Society Publishing
e-ISSN
20545703
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3234038390
Copyright
© 2025. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the "License"). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.