Mimotonids share their closest affinity with lagomorphs and were a rare and endemic faunal element of Paleogene mammal assemblages of central Asia. Here we describe a new species, Mimolagus aurorae from the Middle Eocene of Nei Mongol (China). This species belongs to one of the most enigmatic genera of fossil Glires, previously known only from the type and only specimen from the early Oligocene...

F. González-Lodeiro (Y) 7 F. Aldaya 7 J. Galindo-Zaldívar A. Jabaloy Departamento de Geodinámica, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada, Spain E-mail: jgalindo6goliat.ugr.es Abstract In the internal zones of the Betic cordilleras, extensional structures have developed from the Upper Oligocene to the present day; they are contemporaneous with compressional structures (folds and thrusts) in the...

The South Atlantic region displays (1) a topographic gradient across the basin, with Africa elevated relative to South America, (2) a bimodal spreading history with fast spreading rates in Late Cretaceous and Eo-Oligocene, and (3) episodic regional uplift events in the adjacent continents concentrated in Late Cretaceous and Oligocene. Here we show that these observations can be linked by dynami...

Acrostichum is considered today an opportunistic fern in disturbed areas, which indicates the first stages of colonisation of such zones. However, in the fossil record, Acrostichum appears related to fluvio-lacustrine environments, freshwater marshes and mangrove deposits. We report here for first time fossil evidence of Acrostichum that reveals a pioneering behaviour of this fern in the coloni...

The accretion of the Indian subcontinent to Eurasia triggered a massive faunal and floral exchange, with Gondwanan taxa entering into Asia and vice versa. The traditional view on the Indian-Asian collision assumes contact of the continental plates during the Early Eocene. Many biogeographic studies rely on this assumption. However, the exact mode and timing of this geological event is still und...

[1] The Eocene-Oligocene (E/O) boundary interval marks one of the largest and most rapid changes in climate during the last 50 Myr. Because of a very shallow calcium carbonate compensation depth in the Eocene, as well as the reworking of sediments and hiatuses in the boundary zone, it has also been one of the most difficult stratigraphic boundaries to study in deep water marine sections, especi...

The African Hyaenodontida, mainly known from the Late Eocene and Early Oligocene Fayum depression in Egypt, show a very poor diversity in oldest Paleogene localities. Here we report new hyaenodontidans found in the late Middle Eocene deposits of Dur At-Talah (Central Libya), known to have recorded the earliest radiation of African anthropoids. The new hyaenodontidan remains are represented by d...

The genus Gonatodes is a monophyletic group of small-bodied, diurnal geckos distributed across northern South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. We used fragments of three nuclear genes (RAG2, ACM4, and c-mos) and one mitochondrial gene (16S) to estimate phylogenetic relationships among Amazonian species of Gonatodes. We used Penalized Likelihood to estimate timing of diversification ...

The abrupt appearance of primates and hystricognath rodents in early Oligocene deposits of South America has puzzled mastozoologists for decades. Based on the geoclimatic changes that occurred during the Eocene/Oligocene transition period that may have favoured their dispersal, researchers have proposed the hypothesis that these groups arrived in synchrony. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of synch...

The Asian interior arid zone is the largest desert landform system in the Northern Hemisphere, and has high biodiversity. Little is currently known about the evolutionary history of its biota. In this study, we used Zygophyllum, an important and characteristic component of the Asian interior arid zone, to provide new insights into the evolution of this biota. By greatly enlarged taxon sampling,...