Rebecca Walton's blog

PLoS ONE’s biggest news buzz last week was created by a study from an international team of researchers led by Michael Coble of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. 

After the success of PLoS ONE’s first collection (Stress-Induced Depression and Comorbidities: From Bench to Bedside), published in January, we decided it was high time for a second. This time, we were lucky enough to have already published 26 great articles from a range of fields within the discipline of paleontology (the study of fossils and of life forms that existed in past geological periods). These papers have now been compiled together to form the PLoS ONE Paleontology Collection and each peer-reviewed article can be read online now—in full and for free.

The media coverage of palaeontology papers published in PLoS ONE this year has already got off to a tremendous start thanks to two articles published in the journal this week and last week.

A number of papers published in PLoS ONE in 2008 have been featured in some recent round-ups of the year's best—and quirkiest—research. From worm grunting to an explanation for the superior sound of Stradivarius violins compared with modern violins, as ever, the highlighted articles cover a wide range of different scientific disciplines and topics.

Paul Sereno’s paper wasn’t – by any means – the only PLoS ONE paper published last week to have been covered by the press and by bloggers.