Extinction may alter competitive interactions among surviving species, affecting their subsequent recovery and evolution, but these processes remain poorly understood. Analysis of predation traces produced by shell-drilling muricid snails on bivalve prey reveals that species interactions were substantially different before and after a Plio-Pleistocene mass extinction in the western Atlantic. Mu...

The skull of a mummy horse from the Late Pleistocene of the western Chukchi Peninsula is described. This is the seventh horse mummy recorded during the past 150 years in the Pleistocene permafrost of Siberia. Because of unique preservation (the skeleton is covered by soft tissues and skin) and young indi vidual age (1–1.5 years of age), it is presently impossible to provide its correct species ...

The genus Drysdalia contains three recognised species of elapid (front-fanged) snakes, distributed across south-eastern Australia (including Tasmania). Here we aim to clarify the biogeography and phylogeographical relationships of this poorly documented region. We conducted molecular phylogenetic and dating analyses, using mitochondrial genes (ND4 and cyt-b). Our analyses suggest that divergenc...

Zooarchaeological and paleoecological investigations have traditionally been unable to reconstruct the ethology of herd animals, which likely had a significant influence on the mobility and subsistence strategies of prehistoric humans. In this paper, we reconstruct the migratory behavior of red deer (Cervus elaphus) and caprids at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in the northeastern Adriatic...

Miocene through Pleistocene sediments on the New Jersey continental slope (Ocean Drilling Program Site 1073) are undercompacted (porosity between 40 and 65%) to 640 meters below the sea floor, and this is interpreted to record fluid pressures that reach 95% of the lithostatic stress. A two-dimensional model, where rapid Pleistocene sedimentation loads permeable sandy silt of Miocene age, succes...

Isotopic analyses of subglacially precipitated calcite from near a modern temperate glacier show that the delta(18)O (= (18)O/(16)O relative to standard mean ocean water) of the calcite records the delta(18)O of the ice from that glacier. It may therefore be possible to determine the delta(18)O of Pleistocene ice sheets on the basis of isotopic analyses of calcite formed under that ancient ice....

Forty eight years have elapsed since formal discussions were initiated, in 1948, on the position of the PlioPleistocene boundary. At the 18th International Geological Congress held in London during that year the Commission on the Plio-Pleistocene boundary recommended that “the Lower Pleistocene should include as its basal member the marine Calabrian Formation together with its terrestrial (cont...

la mer caspienne est un bassin isole de type lacustre. son regime sale depend de l'influence de l'eau douce et de l'evaporation de la nappe d'eau. la masse principale des sels vient des bassins qui occupaient son auge au pliocene et au pleistocene. cependant, des la fin du pliocene (i'age apcheron), la mer caspienne formait deja un bassin d'eau saumatre. au cours d...

A nuchal bone and a first left costal bone from two different individuals represent the first fossil record for the diamondback terrapin, Malaclemys terrapin. The bones are from a Pleistocene deposit at Edisto Beach, Colleton County, South Carolina, a locality that is within the present range of M. terrapin. Fossil Chrysemys nelsoni recovered from the same deposit indicate that the ranges of Ch...

Oxygen isotopes in marine sulfate (delta18O(SO4)) measured in marine barite show variability over the past 10 million years, including a 5 per mil decrease during the Plio-Pleistocene, with near-constant values during the Miocene that are slightly enriched over the modern ocean. A numerical model suggests that sea level fluctuations during Plio-Pleistocene glacial cycles affected the sulfur cyc...