A rise in the oxygen content of the atmosphere and oceans is one of the most popular explanations for the relatively late and abrupt appearance of animal life on Earth. In this scenario, Earth's surface environment failed to meet the high oxygen requirements of animals up until the middle to late Neoproterozoic Era (850-542 million years ago), when oxygen concentrations sufficiently rose to per...

The Stirling Range Formation in southwestern Australia contains discoidal fossils previously linked to the late Neoproterozoic Ediacaran biota and possible trace fossils interpreted to have been made by vermiform, mucus-producing, motile organisms. The age of the sedimentary succession was recently reported to be between 2.0 and 1.2 billion years old, based on U–Pb geochronology of detrital zir...

This paper presents a sedimentological and stratigraphical study of Quaternary (Middle to Late Pleistocene/Holocene) continental carbonates outcrops inside Pantanal Basin and its surroundings, especially in Serra da Bodoquena, Pantanal do Miranda and Corumbá/Ladário plateau, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, as well as in Serra das Araras, in the state of Mato Grosso. The aim is to understand...

Late Ediacaran opening of the Iapetus Ocean is typically considered to reflect separation Baltica and Laurentia during final breakup Rodinia supercontinent, with subsequent closure Caledonian Orogeny. However, evidence pre-opening juxtaposition limited purportedly similar apparent polar wander paths correlation Rodinia-forming orogenic events. We show that a range existing data do not unequivoc...

The appearance of photosynthetic eukaryotes (algae and plants) dramatically altered the Earth's ecosystem, making possible all vertebrate life on land, including humans. Dating algal origin is, however, frustrated by a meager fossil record. We generated a plastid multi-gene phylogeny with Bayesian inference and then used maximum likelihood molecular clock methods to estimate algal divergence ti...

We provide new kinematic data from the Potwar Plateau (Pakistan) to evaluate tectonic evolution of region during Neogene. The plateau is bound by two major strike-slip faults in west and east, accommodating its southwards translation.We have recognized Neogene deformation phases plateau, based on paleostress inversion Anisotropy Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) tensors. first phase lasted until ea...

Abstract East Antarctic provinces lay at the heart of both Rodinian and Gondwanan supercontinents, yet poor exposure limited geophysical data provide few constraints on region’s tectonic evolution. The shape Mawson Continent, stable nucleus Antarctica, is one Antarctica’s most important, but contested features, with implications for global plate reconstructions local models. Here we show a majo...