Arenas Blancas is a poorly known fossiliferous site located in the lower reach of Chasicó creek (Buenos Aires Province, Argentina), with great relevance from biostratigraphic viewpoint. The Macrochorobates scalabrinii Biozone was defined this site, proposed as basis early Huayquerian Stage/Age (Late Miocene); however, geological context and faunal record have never been studied detail. In work,...

The article presents new petrogeochemical data on the Middle Miocene-Pliocene volcanic rocks from central part of Iturup Island (Great Kurile Chain). It is shown that volcanism Miocene-Early Pliocene age in took place a suprasubduction setting. distribution high field strength elements (HFSE) and their ratio basaltoids indicate formation upon partial melting depleted upper mantle, while enrichm...

Fourteen of the best sampled Oligo-Miocene local faunas from the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, north-western Queensland, Australia are analysed using classification and ordination techniques to identify potential mammalian palaeocommunities and palaeocommunity types. Abundance data for these faunas are used, for the first time, in conjunction with presence/absence data. An early Miocene Faun...

Abstract The Zagros orogen, formed by the collision of Arabian and Eurasian continental margins, represents one largest richest oil gas provinces in world. fold-thrust belt records convergence along Neotethys suture zone. By coupling field observations, sandstone modal analysis, U-Pb zircon dating, Hf isotopic data from Upper Cretaceous to Pliocene sedimentary succession Neyriz region, this pap...

Cyprus is one of the few areas Mediterranean where lower and upper Miocene coral-reefs occur in close proximity thus well suited to investigate how environmental geological changes affected reefs their associated shallow-marine facies. The prevailing conditions Terra Member Koronia are reconstructed here, using detailed microfacies comparisons skeletal, foraminiferal calcareous algal assemblage...

Melastomataceae sensu stricto (excluding Memecylaceae) comprise some 3000 species in the neotropics, 1000 in Asia, 240 in Africa, and 230 in Madagascar. Previous family-wide morphological and DNA analyses have shown that the Madagascan species belong to at least three unrelated lineages, which were hypothesized to have arrived by trans-oceanic dispersal. An alternative hypothesis posits that th...

Abstract The 350 km-long Adjara-Trialeti fold-and-thrust belt of southwestern Georgia is the result structural inversion a continental back-arc basin developed in Paleogene on upper (Eurasian) plate northward subducting northern branch Neotethys. Low-temperature thermochronological data [fission-track and (U-Th)/He analyses apatite] from sedimentary plutonic rocks provide robust constraints tec...

Primate hands display a major selective compromise between locomotion and manipulation. The thumb may or may not participate in locomotion, but it plays a central role in most manipulative activities. Understanding whether or not the last common ancestor of humans and Pan displayed extant-ape-like hand proportions (i.e., relatively long fingers and a short thumb) can be clarified by the analysi...

The present publication reports new discoveries of Oligocene and early Miocene aplodontid rodents from the Taatsiin Gol area (Valley of Lakes) in Mongolia. The fossil aplodontids recovered in this area are mainly composed of dental remains, some fragmentary jaws plus one partially preserved skull. Aplodontid rodents have been found from the early Oligocene (local biozone A) to the early middle ...

Global and regional environmental changes have influenced the evolutionary processes of hominoid primates, particularly during the Miocene. Recently, a new Lufengpithecus cf. lufengensis hominoid fossil with a late Miocene age of ~6.2 Ma was discovered in the Shuitangba (STB) section of the Zhaotong Basin in Yunnan on the southeast margin of the Tibetan Plateau. To understand the relationship b...