On the basis of a carbon isotopic record of both marine carbonates and organic matter from the Triassic-Jurassic boundary to the present, we modeled oxygen concentrations over the past 205 million years. Our analysis indicates that atmospheric oxygen approximately doubled over this period, with relatively rapid increases in the early Jurassic and the Eocene. We suggest that the overall increase...

A fossil mammal from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation, Colorado, has highly specialized teeth similar to those of xenarthran and tubulidentate placental mammals and different from the generalized insectivorous or omnivorous dentitions of other Jurassic mammals. It has many forelimb features specialized for digging, and its lumbar vertebrae show xenarthrous articulations. Parsimony analysis ...

THE writer has recently been fortunate in finding in the Baptanodon Beds of the Upper Jurassic of Wyoming the remains of a large Plesiosaur, the first of the group from the Jurassic found in America. The horizon is below that of the large Dinosaurs. The precise generic location of the specimen is at present difficult, until more of the specimen has been detached from the hard matrix. It is, the...

Palynological data from the Newark basin of the Newark Supergroup reveal a spike in the spore/pollen ratio at the TriasGc/Jurassic boundary. This spore spike is coincident with a 60% regional extinction of the palynoflora and approximately synchronous with terrestrial vertebrate extinctions. Orbitally controlled sedimentary cycles allow stratigraphic sections to be calibrated in time, constrain...

We describe a new genus and species of Mecoptera with siphonate mouthparts, Sinopolycentropus rasnitsynigen. et sp. n., assigned to the family Pseudopolycentropodidae Handlirsch, 1925. The specimen was collected from late Middle Jurassic nonmarine strata of the Jiulongshan Formation in Inner Mongolia, northeastern China. The new material provides additional evidence for an early diversification...

Viewed solely on its cinematic merits, few are likely to evaluate Andrew Niccol’s film Gattaca as great art. As a vehicle for stimulating debate about serious social and moral issues, however, it shows up well against Independence Day, Jurassic Park, and most other attempts to translate science fiction onto the big screen. Relying heavily on less than subtle imagery (the staircase which the par...

ll science involves what we might call "art" in the sense of requiring intuition, creativity, and inspiration (whether to grasp the underlying causal connection between seemingly unrelated observations or to construct an elegant experimental design). But in a few disciplines, science also closely intermingles with the fine arts, such as painting and sculpture. Dinosaur study is one such discipl...

Nannotanyderus oliviae sp. nov. from the Lower Jurassic (Sinemurian) of England, the oldest representative of family Tanyderidae, is described and illustrated. 

The holotype of the thalattosuchian Machimosaurus hugii von Meyer, 1837 from the Lower Kimmeridgian strata of Soleure, Switzerland has been erected on the basis of teeth. Due to their characteristic morphology bearing a set of pronounced vertical ridges on the enamel surface, the genus Machimosaurus von Meyer, 1837 is easily recognizable in Late Jurassic strata of Europe (Sauvage & Li nard 1879...

middle jurassic (bajocian-bathonian) sphenophyta fossils of the silicified level peats of the pabdana coal mine (kerman) recovered. four new species of sphenophyta described for the first time. they include equisetites pabdanaii sp. nov., equisetites sparseii sp. nov., equisetites hojedkii sp. nov. and equisetites irregularii sp. nov.,. descriptions of the above mentioned new species has been d...