A major gap in our knowledge of the evolution of marsupial mammals concerns the Paleogene of the northern continents, a critical time and place to link the early history of metatherians in Asia and North America with the more recent diversification in South America and Australia. We studied new exceptionally well-preserved partial skeletons of the Early Oligocene fossil Herpetotherium from the ...

First low-temperature thermochronology data across the central Patagonia and thermal modeling provide information on history of intraplate San Bernardo fold thrust belt (44–46 °S). Apatite (U–Th-Sm)/He (AHe), fission tracks (AFT) ages inverse indicate that sedimentary rocks presently at surface southwestern FTB have experienced a broadly similar history: i) cooling deposition time during Cretac...

Abstract Sloths were among the most diverse groups of land vertebrates that inhabited Greater Antilles until their extinction in middle-late Holocene following arrival humans to islands. Although fossil record group is well known from Quaternary deposits Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico, remains older units are scarce, limiting our understanding evolution biogeographic history. Here we report ...

BACKGROUND A number of aberrant walruses (Odobenidae) have been described from the Neogene of the North Pacific, including specialized suction-feeding and generalist fish-eating taxa. At least one of these fossil walruses has been hypothesized to have been a specialized predator of other marine mammals, the middle Miocene walrus Pelagiarctos thomasi from the Sharktooth Hill Bonebed of Californi...

Panicum sensu stricto is a genus of grasses (Poaceae) with nearly, according to this study, 163 species distributed worldwide. This genus is included in the subtribe Panicinae together with Louisiella, the latter with 2 species. Panicum and subtribe Panicinae are characterized by including annual or perennial taxa with open and lax panicles, and spikelets with the lower glume reduced; all taxa ...

Between the late Oligocene and the early Miocene, climatic changes have shattered the faunal and floral communities and drove the apparition of new ecological niches. Grassland biomes began to supplant forestlands, thus favouring a large-scale ecosystem turnover. The independent adaptive radiations of several mammal lineages through the evolution of key innovations are classic examples of these...