The widespread assumption that the origin of polar marine faunas is linked to the onset of major global cooling in the Late Eocene-Early Oligocene is being increasingly challenged. The Antarctic fossil record in particular is suggesting that some modern Southern Ocean taxa may have Early Eocene or even Paleocene origins, i.e. well within the Early Cenozoic greenhouse world. A global analysis of...

A new species of phantom crane flies (Ptychopteridae: Bittacomorphinae), Probittacomorpha brisaci n. sp., is described based on a single specimen from the Late Miocene volcano-sedimentary paleolake of Montagne d’Andance (Saint Bauzile, Ardèche, France). This is the second known species of the fossil genus Probittacomorpha. Previously described species has been found in the Paleocene-Eocene Fur-...

Paleosecuridaca curtisii Pigg, DeVore, and Wojciechowski gen. et sp. nov. (Polygalaceae) is described for anatomically preserved, nonschizocarpic, asymmetric samaras from the Late Paleocene (Tiffanian 3) Almont and Beicegel Creek floras of North Dakota. Paleosecuridaca is quite similar to the extant genus Securidaca L. (Polygalaceae) but has several distinctive features that warrant the establi...

The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56 Ma) was a phase of rapid global warming associated with massive carbon input into the ocean–atmosphere system from a 13C-depleted reservoir. Many midlatitude and high-latitude sections have been studied and document changes in salinity, hydrology and sedimentation, deoxygenation, biotic overturning, and migrations, but detailed records from tropica...

Southern-Hemisphere terrestrial communities from the early Paleocene are poorly known, but recent work on Danian plant fossils from the Salamanca Formation in Chubut Province, Argentina are providing critical data on earliest Paleocene floras. The fossils described here come from a site in the Salamanca Formation dating to ca. 1 million years or less after the end-Cretaceous extinction event; t...

More than 25 new specimens of Teilhardina brandti, one of the oldest known euprimates, are reported from earliest Eocene strata of the southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. The new fossils include the first upper dentitions, a dentary showing the lower dental formula for the first time, and the first postcrania ascribed to T. brandti (tarsals and terminal phalanges). The elongated navicular and long...

[1] In the New Jersey Coastal Plain, a silty to clayey sedimentary unit (the Marlboro Formation) represents deposition during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM). This interval is remarkably different from the glauconitic sands and silts of the underlying Paleocene Vincentown and overlying Eocene Manasquan Formation. We integrate new and published stable isotope, biostratigraphic, litho...

Rapid warming at the beginning of the Eocene (the Initial Eocene Thermal Maximum, or IETM) has been associated with modest changes in floral composition, mostly shifts in the relative abundances of taxa rather than large numbers of first or last appearances. Although floral change across the Paleocene-Eocene transition has been studied in many areas, few fossils demonstrably come from the ∼200 ...

Modern Neotropical rainforests are characterized by the high intensity and host specificity with which insects feed on plants. Previous studies have shown that, during middle–late Paleocene, leaves of early evolving tropical South America were heavily herbivorized insects. Yet, less attention has been given to insect damage found fossil fruits seeds, despite specialization many disseminule pred...