The Middle Jurassic (Bathonian)-Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) deposits exposed at the southern front of Central High Atlas (CHA, Southern Morocco) include thick fluvial successions largely undifferentiated in previous studies. These continental strata record a long period relief formation due to crustal shortening and subsequent denudation that predated Cenozoic, syn-collisional, tectonic in...

The future impacts of anthropogenic global change on marine ecosystems are highly uncertain, but insights can be gained from past intervals of high atmospheric carbon dioxide partial pressure. The long-term geological record reveals an early Cenozoic warm climate that supported smaller polar ecosystems, few coral-algal reefs, expanded shallow-water platforms, longer food chains with less energy...

The decline of species richness from equator to pole, or latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), is nearly universal among clades of living organisms, yet whether it was such a pervasive pattern in the geologic past remains uncertain. Here, we calculate the strength of the LDG for terrestrial mammals in North America over the past 65 My, using 27,903 fossil occurrences of Cenozoic terrestrial mam...

Global climate change is having profound impacts on the natural world. However, climate influence on faunal dynamics at macroevolutionary scales remains poorly understood. In this paper we investigate the influence of climate over deep time on the diversity patterns of Cenozoic North American mammals. We use factor analysis to identify temporally correlated assemblages of taxa, or major evoluti...

In the western Anatolia, tectonic regime transitioned from crustal shortening to extension during Late Cenozoic time and evidence of this event was imprinted on basement lithologies N-S E-W oriented two distinct basin sub-types. Here, we examined exhumation mechanism Menderes massif that forms these basins a different perspective. The overlying rock types were re-evaluated based new has potenti...

Penguins (Sphenisciformes) inhabit some of the most extreme environments on Earth. The 60+ Myr fossil record of penguins spans an interval that witnessed dramatic shifts in Cenozoic ocean temperatures and currents, indicating a long interplay between penguin evolution and environmental change. Perhaps the most celebrated example is the successful Late Cenozoic invasion of glacial environments b...

Located in northern Peru, at the lowest segment of Central Andes, Bagua Basin contains a Campanian to Pleistocene sedimentary record that archives local paleoenvironmental and tectonic history. We present new ?18O ?13C signatures pedogenic carbonate nodules from paleosols Campanian–Maastrichtian Fundo El Triunfo Formation upper Eocene–middle Miocene Sambimera reconstruct isotopic composition pa...

In this paper the geometrical relationship of the folds which exist in the Folded Zagros Mountains, including Asef Mountain (northern Iran), were studied. The southern and western zones of the Zagros Mountains are called the Folded Zagros. These zones extend approximately 1,375 km in length with a width ranging from 120 to 250 km. Asef Mountain is located in northern Shiraz (from northern Sarda...