Berlin’s Fossil Record Journal Marks 25 Years with Landmark Volume on the Fish-to-Tetrapod Transition

The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is celebrating a quarter-century of palaeontological publishing with a special anniversary volume of its journal Fossil Record, devoted to one of the most dramatic chapters in the history of life: the transition from fish to tetrapods and the conquest of land by vertebrates. The special issue, assembled to mark the journal’s anniversary, brings together a diverse cross-section of modern research on early land-dwelling vertebrates and reflects the museum’s long-standing commitment to this field. Founded in 1998, Fossil Record has grown from a house organ dominated by in-house authors into an internationally visible, open access journal that now sits firmly in the top quartile of palaeontological journals worldwide, with a current impact factor of 1.9.

The choice of theme for the anniversary volume is no accident. The evolution of early land vertebrates is one of the main research areas at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, where several research groups focus on how finned aquatic ancestors gave rise to four-limbed animals capable of life on land. This transformation, which unfolded over tens of millions of years during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, involved profound anatomical and physiological changes: limbs with digits replacing fins, lungs and modified circulatory systems supplementing or replacing gill-based respiration, restructured skulls and necks suited to feeding in air rather than water, and sensory systems retooled for a world of light, sound and gravity fundamentally different from the aquatic realm.

Understanding this transition requires fossils that capture animals at intermediate stages, and it is here that the museum’s active fieldwork programme plays a crucial role. At the Bromacker site in Thuringia, an intensive excavation and research campaign is being carried out in close collaboration with Jena University, the Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha and the UNESCO Geopark Drei Gleichen. The Bromacker has long been celebrated for its early Permian terrestrial vertebrate fossils, offering a window onto ecosystems that existed shortly after vertebrates first established themselves on land. Such sites provide the raw material for testing hypotheses about how early tetrapods walked, breathed, fed and diversified as they moved into terrestrial habitats.

The anniversary volume itself was curated by three editors, who assembled what the museum describes as a very interesting and diverse cross-section of modern research articles on early tetrapods. Special issues of this kind serve an important function in palaeontology, gathering scattered strands of research into a single collection that allows readers to see the state of a field at a glance. For a journal marking twenty-five years of publication, the theme also connects the anniversary to the institution’s scientific identity: the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is not merely a publisher of research on early tetrapods but an active producer of it.

The journal’s own history mirrors broader changes in scientific publishing. In its early years, a large share of submitted manuscripts came from authors affiliated with the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin itself. Today, most submissions arrive from abroad and from researchers with no connection to the museum, a shift that signals the journal’s successful transformation into a genuinely international venue. That visibility is reflected quantitatively as well: a place in the top quartile of palaeontological journals places Fossil Record among the most influential outlets in a competitive field that spans everything from micropalaeontology to vertebrate evolution and deep-time biodiversity studies.

A pivotal moment came in 2014, when, in consultation with its stakeholders, the journal was converted into an open access publication. The move was a deliberate statement by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin about the open availability of research results, the idea that publicly funded science should be freely readable by anyone, anywhere, without subscription barriers. The subsequent success of the journal, the museum argues, has vindicated that decision. Open access has become the dominant direction in scientific publishing globally, driven by funder mandates and by the recognition that paywalls limit both the reach of research and its ability to inform education, policy and public understanding of science.

What makes Fossil Record unusual among open access journals is its funding model. Most open access journals charge authors an article processing charge, a fee that can run to thousands of dollars per paper and that critics argue creates inequities, favouring well-funded institutions in wealthy countries and potentially excluding researchers from lower-income settings. Fossil Record requests no such charges from authors. Instead, the costs of publication have been covered by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin itself, an arrangement that keeps the journal free to read and free to publish in, and that the museum presents as part of its broader commitment to equitable access to scientific knowledge.

The anniversary also offers an occasion to reflect on the mechanics of a successful scientific journal. In his welcoming address marking the occasion, the museum’s Director General credited the editorial board of Fossil Record and the museum’s publication office for their tireless efforts to improve the journal’s quality and visibility, and highlighted the deep and trusting cooperation between the museum’s directorate, its publication management team and the journal’s editors. This team approach, he argued, has contributed significantly to the journal’s success, a reminder that behind every impact factor stands a network of editors, reviewers, copy editors and production staff whose work determines whether a journal earns the trust of its community.

For readers of the special volume, the scientific payoff lies in the content itself. Research on the fish-to-tetrapod transition sits at the intersection of several disciplines: comparative anatomy, which reconstructs how skeletal structures changed; palaeohistology, which examines fossilized bone microstructure to infer growth and physiology; ichnology, the study of trace fossils such as footprints that record how early land animals actually moved; and geochemical and sedimentological analyses that reconstruct the ancient environments in which these animals lived. Together, such approaches have reshaped scientific understanding of the transition, painting a picture of a gradual, experiment-filled process in which many early tetrapods remained tied to aquatic habitats even as they acquired increasingly terrestrial features.

As Fossil Record enters its next quarter-century, the museum’s leadership has expressed pride in the journal and optimism about its future, noting that it stands alongside two other scientific journals published by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. For the palaeontological community, the anniversary volume on early tetrapods is both a celebration and a working resource: a collection of current research on one of evolution’s great transitions, published in a journal that has made openness, international participation and institutional support the foundations of its identity. Twenty-five years after its foundation, Fossil Record has come a long way, and its anniversary theme ensures that the celebration is anchored in the science the museum knows best.

Subject of Research: Anniversary of the palaeontological journal Fossil Record and research on the fish-to-tetrapod transition

Article Title: Welcoming address of the Director General

Article References: Vogel, J. (2024). Welcoming address of the Director General. Fossil Record, 27(3), 289-289. https://doi.org/10.3897/fr.27.142092

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/fr.27.142092

Keywords: Fossil Record, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, tetrapods, fish-to-tetrapod transition, open access, palaeontology, Bromacker, Thuringia, early land vertebrates, scientific publishing, impact factor, anniversary volume