Terpenoid resin is produced by all families and most genera of the order Coniferales (the conifers), and the distribution of terpenes present in most conifer resins is characteristic of the originating family. Analyses of early Cretaceous (Barremian) amber (fossil resin) from the English Wealden, Isle of Wight, southern England, by pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS), indi...

Eudicots, the most diverse of the three major clades of living angiosperms, are first recognized in the latest Barremian-earliest Aptian. All Early Cretaceous forms appear to be related to species-poor lineages that diverged before the rise of core eudicots, which today comprise more than 70% of angiosperm species. Here, we report the discovery of a well-preserved flower, Caliciflora mauldinens...

BACKGROUND The Tapejaridae is a group of unusual toothless pterosaurs characterized by bizarre cranial crests. From a paleoecological point of view, frugivorous feeding habits have often been suggested for one of its included clades, the Tapejarinae. So far, the presence of these intriguing flying reptiles has been unambiguously documented from Early Cretaceous sites in China and Brazil, where ...

The early diversification of angiosperms in diverse ecological niches is poorly understood. Some have proposed an origin in a darkened forest habitat and others an open aquatic or near aquatic habitat. The research presented here centers on Montsechia vidalii, first recovered from lithographic limestone deposits in the Pyrenees of Spain more than 100 y ago. This fossil material has been poorly ...

Morphological phylogenies stand in a major conflict with molecular hypotheses regarding the phylogeny of Cryptodira, the most diverse and widely distributed clade of extant turtles. However, molecular hypotheses are often considered a better estimate of phylogeny given that it is more consistent with the stratigraphic and geographic distribution of extinct taxa. That morphology fails to reprodu...

Sandownids are a group of Early Cretaceous-Paleocene turtles that for several decades have been only known by cranial and very fragmentary postcranial elements. Here I report and describe the most complete sandownid turtle known so far, including articulated skull, lower jaw and postcranial elements, from the Early Cretaceous (upper Barremian-lower Aptian, >120 Ma), Paja Formation, Villa de Ley...

Fossils from the “Jehol Biota” have been studied for nearly 90 years, and the term “Jehol Biota” has been extensively used and is well known today, largely thanks to the discovery of feathered dinosaurs, angiosperms, and numerous other exceptionally preserved fossils in the Lower Cretaceous of northeastern China. Ironically, however, what exactly the Jehol Biota represents and how it is defined...

The first flowering plant fossils occur as rare, undiverse pollen grains in the Early Cretaceous (Valanginian-Hauterivian). Angiosperms diversified slowly during the Barremian-Aptian but rapidly during the Albian-Cenomanian. By the end of the Cretaceous, at least half of the living angiosperm orders were present, and angiosperms were greater than 70% of terrestrial plant species globally. The r...