A 1500-m-thick Cenozoic sequence was recovered in a series of 3 drill holes from the Victoria Land Basin, Antarctica, in association with the Cape Roberts Project. The CRP-3 drill hole penetrated the oldest Palaeogene strata in the Granite Harbour region and terminated in strata from the Devonian Beacon Supergroup. The upper 823-m of the CRP-3 drill-core is an expanded sequence that may span th...

The Jebel Qatrani Formation of northern Egypt has produced Afro-Arabia's primary record of Paleogene mammalian evolution, including the world's most complete remains of early anthropoid primates. Recent studies of Fayum mammals have assumed that the Jebel Qatrani Formation contains a significant Eocene component ( approximately 150 of 340 m), and that most taxa from that succession are between ...

We report the oldest known record of Lagomorpha, based on distinctive, small ankle bones (calcaneus and talus) from Early Eocene deposits (Middle Ypresian equivalent, ca 53 Myr ago) of Gujarat, west-central India. The fossils predate the oldest previously known crown lagomorphs by several million years and extend the record of lagomorphs on the Indian subcontinent by 35 Myr. The bones show a mo...

Today coral reefs are threatened by changes to seawater conditions associated with rapid anthropogenic global climate change. Yet, since the Cenozoic, these organisms have experienced major fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 levels (from greenhouse conditions of high pCO2 in the Eocene to low pCO2 ice-house conditions in the Oligocene-Miocene) and a dramatically changing ocean Mg/Ca ratio. Here we...

The Paleocene-Eocene transition in North American land-mammal faunas is well documented on the south side of Polecat Bench and in surrounding badlands of northwestern Wyoming. Here a rich fossil record is known from a stratigraphic section with an established geomagnetic polarity time scale and mediumto high-resolution carbon and oxygen isotope records. The Paleocene-Eocene carbon isotope excur...

BACKGROUND The Saururaceae, a very small family of Piperales comprising only six species in four genera, have a relatively scanty fossil record outside of Europe. The phylogenetic relationships of the four genera to each other are resolved, with the type genus Saururus occurring in both eastern North America and East Asia. No extant species occurs in western Eurasia. The most exceptional find s...

We present a detailed geologic study of the Thebes Formation at Gebel Gurnah in its locus typicus on the West Bank (opposite Luxor) of the Nile River in the Upper Nile Valley, Egypt. This is the first detailed measurement and lithologic description of the ~340 m thick (predominantly) carbonate section. The Thebes Formation is divided into thirteen major lithic units (A to M). We interpret data ...

Primates appear at or immediately after the beginning of the Eocene, in the global carbon isotope excursion (CIE) marking the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. We presented evidence for dispersal of Teilhardina from Asia to Europe to North America in the first 25 kyr of the CIE (first 25 kyr of the Eocene; ref. 1). Beard claims to refute the direction of dispersal by reporting a new, possibly o...

A frequently cited atmospheric CO2 threshold for the onset of Antarctic glaciation of ∼ 780 ppmv is based on the study of DeConto and Pollard (2003) using an ice sheet model and the GENESIS climate model. Proxy records suggest that atmospheric CO2 concentrations passed through this threshold across the Eocene–Oligocene transition ∼ 34 Ma. However, atmospheric CO2 concentrations may have been cl...

1 We examine the effect of the deepening of the Tasman Seaway at the end of 2 the Eocene in a climate model with realistic late Eocene bathymetry and winds. 3 For this, we have contructed an Eocene numerical model based on the University 4 of Victoria climate model with wind forcing derived from a fully coupled Eocene 5 simulation. The model climate state is characterized by an oceanic meridion...