three granitoid bodies, shirkuh batholith, kaffe abad and ader bolandan are exposed in nw yazd, cutting across the naiband formation (upper triassic), and overlain by cretaceous formations. shirkuh batholith is most likely of jurassic age. it seems to be the first and the most significant episode of magmatism in studied area which occurred in middle jurassic (late cimmerian) time. on the other ...

The Beyşehir–Hoyran–Hadim Nappes crop out over 700 km from NW to SE. Above a regionally autochthonous Tauride carbonate platform the Beyşehir–Hoyran Nappes begin with a thrust sheet (c. 400 m) of mainly redeposited carbonates, quartzose sandstones and mudstones of Mid–Late Triassic age, interpreted as a proximal slope–base-of-slope succession. Above is a thrust sheet (c. 1 km) of Middle–Upper T...

From well preserved leaf damage of the mid-Cretaceous Dakota Flora (97 million years ago), three distinctive, insect-mediated feeding traces have been identified and assigned to two extant genera and one subfamily. These taxa are the leaf miners Stigmella and Ectoedemia of the Nepticulidae and Phyllocnistinae of the Gracillariidae. These fossils indicate that within 25 million years of early an...

Marine microbialites serve as robust seawater rare earth element and yttrium (REE+Y) proxies through many intervals of Earth history, but questions remain about the partitioning of REEs into different coeval carbonate phases, potential syn-depositional contaminants and elemental redistribution during diagenesis. Microbial carbonates, cements and background sediments were analysed for stable iso...

Parasites are common in modern ecosystems and are also known from the fossil record. One of the best preserved and easily recognisable examples of parasitism in the fossil record concerns isopod-induced swellings in the branchial chamber of marine decapod crustaceans. However, very limited quantitative data on the variability of infestation percentages at the species, genus, and family levels a...

Introduction: The age of the ~23 km in diameter Rochechouart impact structure, France, hosted by Precambrian to Paleozoic (Variscan) crystalline rocks of the northwestern French Massif Central, has long time been a matter of debate. Previous studies, including K-Ar, Rb-Sr, apatite and glass fission track, as well as paleomagnetic dating (see [1] for summary of ages), resulted in a broad (Middle...

Background. The Swiss Jura Mountains are a key region for Late Jurassic eucryptodiran turtles. Already in the mid 19th century, the Solothurn Turtle Limestone (Solothurn, NW Switzerland) yielded a great amount of Kimmeridgian turtles that are traditionally referred to Plesiochelyidae, Thalassemydidae, and Eurysternidae. In the past few years, fossils of these coastal marine turtles were also ab...

SYNOPSIS Recent discoveries and analyses have drawn increased attention to Ceratosauria, a taxonomically and morphologically diverse group of basal theropods. By the time of its first appearance in the Late Jurassic, the group was probably globally distributed. This pattern eventually gave way to a primarily Gondwanan distribution by the Late Cretaceous. Ceratosaurs are one of several focal gro...

Dendrobranchiate shrimps are abundant in Fossil-Lagerstätten (where fossils exceptionally preserved). Despite their preservation, classifying them can be challenging as most diagnostic characters based upon extant species. Penaeus natatorGlaessner, 1945 (Late Cretaceous, Lebanon, Sahel Alma), is one of those cases which the systematic assignment species difficult. It was assigned by “default” t...

We provide a biochronology of Jurassic planktonic foramininfera, using first order linkage to ammonite and nannofossil stratigraphy geochronology. This enigmatic understudied group microfossils occurred from middle Toarcian through Tithonian time, ~180 ~143 Ma; its origin is unknown. There are three genera: Globuligerina, Conoglobigerina Petaloglobigerina. The genus with smooth pustulose test s...