Earliest Paleocene Purgatorius often is regarded as the geologically oldest primate, but it has been known only from fossilized dentitions since it was first described half a century ago. The dentition of Purgatorius is more primitive than those of all known living and fossil primates, leading some researchers to suggest that it lies near the ancestry of all other primates; however, others have...

Dramatic warming and upheaval of the carbon system at the end of the Paleocene Epoch have been linked to massive dissociation of sedimentary methane hydrate. However, testing the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum hydrate dissociation hypothesis has been hindered by the inability of available proxy records to resolve the initial sequence of events. The cause of the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximu...

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...

The Maastrichtian–Eocene sediments (mainly shales and limestones) penetrated by the Itori borehole Ilaro boreholes in Dahomey Basin were investigated for foraminiferal biostratigraphy palaeoecological interpretation. These Araromi, Ewekoro, Oshosun formations at varying depths. Selected shale subjected to analysis many planktonic benthic species of foraminifera (agglutinated calcareous) recover...