Fossil Diodontidae in Tropical America consist mostly of isolated and fused beak-like jawbones, and tooth plate batteries. These durophagous fishes are powerful shell-crushing predators on shallow water invertebrate faunas from Neogene tropical carbonate bottom, rocky reefs and surrounding flats. We use an ontogenetic series of high-resolution micro CT of fossil and extant species to recognize ...

Tropical diversity has generally exceeded temperate diversity in the present and at points in the past, but whether measured differences have remained relatively constant through time has been unknown. Here we examine tropical vs. temperate diversities from the Neogene to Recent using the within-habitat diversity measure Fisher's alpha of Cenozoic benthic foraminifera from the temperate Central...

Rare species frequently occur in areas with microclimatic conditions that are atypical for their regions, but that were more common in the past, and that probably have operated as climatic refugia for a long time. Myrceugenia correifolia is a rare arboreal species that grows in deep canyons and hilltops of the Coast Range of north-central Chile between 30° and 35°S. In the northern edge of its ...

Melanopsis fateljensis (Caenogastropoda: Cerithiimorpha: Melanopsidae) is described as a new species from the early Middle Miocene lacustrine deposits of the Kupres Basin. Similarities to other co-occurring melanopsids are discussed. Its unique morphology, in particular the elongate, stepped spire with prominent spiral bulges, clearly distinguishes the new species from all other Melanopsidae kn...

Phylogeographic relationships among 26 populations from throughout the geographic range of the Peromyscus eremicus species group are described based on sequence data for a 699-bp fragment of the mitochondrial DNA COIII gene. Distance, maximum-likelihood, and maximum-parsimony analyses of phylogenetic trees generated under four separate character-weighting strategies and representing five altern...

This paper presents the first study of Tl isotopes in early diagenetic pyrite. Measurements from two sections deposited during the Toarcian Ocean Anoxic Event (T-OAE, 183 Ma) are compared with data from Late Neogene (<10 Ma) pyrite samples from ODP legs 165 and 167 that were deposited in relatively oxic marine environments. The Tl isotope compositions of Late Neogene pyrites are all significant...

BACKGROUND The fossil record reveals surprising crocodile diversity in the Neogene of Africa, but relationships with their living relatives and the biogeographic origins of the modern African crocodylian fauna are poorly understood. A Plio-Pleistocene crocodile from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, represents a new extinct species and shows that high crocodylian diversity in Africa persisted after the ...

Department of Geosciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105, U.S.A. ([email protected]; [email protected]) Department of Earth Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, U.S.A. ([email protected]) 1930 Bunkhouse Drive, Jackson, WY 83001, U.S.A. ([email protected]) Plant Sciences and Biodiversity, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3141 (david.cantr...