Sphenodontians were a successful group of rhynchocephalian reptiles that dominated the fossil record of Lepidosauria during the Triassic and Jurassic. Although evidence of extinction is seen at the end of the Laurasian Early Cretaceous, they appeared to remain numerically abundant in South America until the end of the period. Most of the known Late Cretaceous record in South America is composed...

The historically productive copper-bearing Besshi-type sulphide deposits in the Japanese accretionary complex were formed as volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits on the deep-sea floor of the Panthalassa Ocean. Here we report that eleven typical Besshi-type deposits yielded Re-Os isochron ages around 150 Ma (148.4 ± 1.4 Ma from the composite isochron) in Late Jurassic time. This date coincides...

Growing evidence of morphological diversity in angiosperm flowers, seeds and pollen from the mid Cretaceous and the presence of derived lineages from increasingly older geological deposits both imply that the timing of early angiosperm cladogenesis is older than fossil-based estimates have indicated. An alternative to fossils for calibrating the phylogeny comes from divergence in DNA sequence d...

An articulated and partially preserved skeleton of an ichthyosaur was found in the Upper Jurassic (Upper Kimmeridgian) Katrol Formation exposed at a site south of the village Lodai in Kachchh district, Gujarat (western India). Here we present a detailed description and inferred taxonomic relationship of the specimen. The present study revealed that the articulated skeleton belongs to the family...

The end-Triassic mass extinction overlapped with the eruption of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), and release of CO2 and other volcanic volatiles has been implicated in the extinction. However, the timing of marine biotic recovery versus CAMP eruptions remains uncertain. Here we use Hg concentrations and isotopes as indicators of CAMP volcanism in continental shelf sediments, the ...

A new salamandroid salamander, Qinglongtriton gangouensis (gen. et sp. nov.), is named and described based on 46 fossil specimens of juveniles and adults collected from the Upper Jurassic (Oxfordian) Tiaojishan Formation cropping out in Hebei Province, China. The new salamander displays several ontogenetically and taxonomically significant features, most prominently the presence of a toothed pa...

Texada Island (Figure 2-5-1) is with.in Wrangellia. Calcalkaline plutonism of the Coast plutonic complex is superimposed on this terrane. The northern part of the island is made up mainly ct basaltic amygdaloidal flows and pillovr lavas of the ?exad1 Formation (Karmutsen Fbrmation) overlain by massibe grqi limestone and white marble of the Marble Bay Fonnatio I (Quatsino Formation). These Upper...

One of the most severe mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic, the Triassic-Jurassic event is greater or equal in magnitude to that at the more famous K-T boundary (Benton, 1994) (Fig. 1). Such severity, at least for marine families is also supported by Foote’s (2003) statistical revaluations, although there remain dissenters (e.g. Hallam, 2002; Lucas et al., 2002). The cause of this mass-extincti...