Deltatheroidans are primitive metatherian mammals (relatives of marsupials), previously thought to have become extinct during the Cretaceous mass extinction. Here, we report a tiny new deltatheroidan mammal (Gurbanodelta kara gen. et sp. nov.) discovered at the South Gobi locality in China (Xinjiang Province) that is the first Cenozoic record of this clade and renders Deltatheroida a Lazarus ta...

Global ocean temperatures rapidly warmed by ~5°C during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM; ~56 million years ago). Extratropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) met or exceeded modern subtropical values. With these warm extratropical temperatures, climate models predict tropical SSTs >35°C-near upper physiological temperature limits for many organisms. However, few data are available t...

The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) has been attributed to the rapid release of approximately 2000 x 10(9) metric tons of carbon in the form of methane. In theory, oxidation and ocean absorption of this carbon should have lowered deep-sea pH, thereby triggering a rapid (<10,000-year) shoaling of the calcite compensation depth (CCD), followed by gradual recovery. Here we present geochemi...

Evidence is accumulating for a rapid diversification of birds following the K-Pg extinction. Recent molecular divergence dating studies suggest that birds radiated explosively during the first few million years of the Paleocene; however, fossils from this interval remain poorly represented, hindering our understanding of morphological and ecological specialization in early neoavian birds. Here ...

Fossils are indispensible in understanding the evolutionary origins of the modern fauna. Crown-group spadefoot toads (Anura: Pelobatoidea) are the best-known fossorial frog clade to inhabit arid environments, with species utilizing a characteristic bony spade on their foot for burrowing. Endemic to the Northern Hemisphere, they are distributed across the Holarctic except East Asia. Here we repo...

North American mammals experienced a major mass extinction at the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary that is tied unambiguously to the Chicxulub impact event. Immediately afterwards, there was an immense adaptive radiation that greatly expanded taxonomic diversity and the range of body sizes and ecological strategies. However, ties between later, Cenozoic impact events and specific episodes in ...

The origin and processes creating the high diversity of plant species in neotropical rain forests and their floristic composition and multistratitified forest structure are still uncertain. Here, we studied one of the most common leaf morphotypes of the Cerrejón flora (middle-late Paleocene, ca. 60-58 Ma), Guajira, Colombia, that contains one of the oldest records of neotropical rain forest flo...

[1] Satellite gravity inversion incorporating a lithosphere thermal gravity correction has been used to map crustal thickness and lithosphere thinning factor for the NE Atlantic. Predicted oceanic crustal thicknesses in the Norwegian Basin are between 4 and 7 km on the extinct Aegir Ridge, increasing to 9 – 14 km at the margins, consistent with volcanic margin continental breakup at the end of ...

Thick sandstones of the Yamna suite are widespread throughout Skіba cover, as well in south-eastern part Krosno cover. The research area is bounded by Limnytsia River northwest and Ukrainian-Romanian border southeast. Several promising structures comprising (Brusturanska, Yanovetska, Voronenkivska) identified this area. Among them, according to number positive indicators oil gas potential, Voro...

The Andaman and Nicobar ophiolites, in the forearc of western Sunda subduction zone, underwent enigmatic, rapid Cenozoic vertical motions: shallow-water sediments with abundant arc debris characterize middle Paleocene–middle Eocene are under- overlain by significantly deeper sediments. Recent paleomagnetic results revealed a near-equatorial paleolatitude West Burma Block associated at similar l...