Warm and wet conditions in the Arctic region during Eocene Thermal Maximum 2

High latitude hydrological changes during the Eocene Thermal Maximum 2

Sharply increased insect herbivory during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 55.8 Ma), an abrupt global warming event linked to a transient increase in pCO2, was comparable in rate and magnitude to modern anthropogenic climate change. Here we use plant fossils from the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming to document the combined effects of temperature and pCO2 on insect herbivory. We examined 5,062 fossil leaves from five sites positione...

Extreme warmth and heat-stressed plankton in the tropics during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

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 oldest North American primate and mammalian biogeography during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Undoubted primates first appear almost synchronously in the fossil records of Asia, Europe, and North America. This temporal pattern has complicated efforts to reconstruct the early dispersal history of primates in relation to global climate change and eustatic fluctuations in sea level. Here, I describe fossils from the Tuscahoma Formation on the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mississippi documenting a...

Floral change during the Initial Eocene Thermal Maximum in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming

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 ...