Metatherians, which comprise marsupials and their closest fossil relatives, were one of the most dominant clades of mammals during the Cretaceous and are the most diverse clade of living mammals after Placentalia. Our understanding of this group has increased greatly over the past 20 years, with the discovery of new specimens and the application of new analytical tools. Here we provide a review...

[1] We apply adjoint models of mantle convection to North America since the Late Cretaceous. The present-day mantle structure is constrained by seismic tomography and the time-dependent evolution by plate motions and stratigraphic data (paleoshorelines, borehole tectonic subsidence, and sediment isopachs). We infer values of average upper and lower mantle viscosities, provide a synthesis of Nor...

Living reef fishes are one of the most diverse vertebrate assemblages on Earth. Despite its prominence and ecological importance, the origins and assembly of the reef fish fauna is poorly described. A patchy fossil record suggests that the major colonization of reef habitats must have occurred in the Late Cretaceous and early Palaeogene, with the earliest known modern fossil coral reef fish ass...

The Late Cretaceous was a time of tremendous global change, as the final stages of the Age of Dinosaurs were shaped by climate and sea level fluctuations and witness to marked paleogeographic and faunal changes, before the end-Cretaceous bolide impact. The terrestrial fossil record of Late Cretaceous Europe is becoming increasingly better understood, based largely on intensive fieldwork over th...

Testing models of macroevolution, and especially the sufficiency of microevolutionary processes, requires good collaboration between molecular biologists and paleontologists. We report such a test for events around the Late Cretaceous by describing the earliest penguin fossils, analyzing complete mitochondrial genomes from an albatross, a petrel, and a loon, and describe the gradual decline of ...

Despite the extensive fossil record of higher crabs (Eubrachyura) from Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic rocks worldwide, their Early Cretaceous occurrences are scarce and fragmentary, obscuring our understanding of their early evolution. Until now, representatives of only two families of eubrachyuran-like crabs were known from the Early Cretaceous: Componocancridae and Tepexicarcinidae fam. nov., b...

coccolithophores are important primary producers in the modern world ocean and were almost certainly important in the mesozoic oceans, prior to the evolution and rise of diatoms in the phytoplankton. calcareous nannofossils are abundant, planktonic, rapidly evolving and largely cosmopolitan, so they are a good tool for biostratigraphy and paleoecology studies especially in the cretaceous system...

The Late Cretaceous (∼95-66 million years ago) western North American landmass of Laramidia displayed heightened non-marine vertebrate diversity and intracontinental regionalism relative to other latest Cretaceous Laurasian ecosystems. Processes generating these patterns during this interval remain poorly understood despite their presumed role in the diversification of many clades. Tyrannosauri...

[1] In the Shiquanhe area of far-western Tibet, midCretaceous strata lie unconformable on ophiolitic melange and Jurassic flysch associated with the Bangong-Nujiang suture zone. On the basis of our mapping and geochronologic studies, we suggest that these Cretaceous strata were shortened by >57% over a north south distance of 50 km during Late Cretaceousearly Tertiary time. The Late Cretaceous ...

The fossil record for neoceratopsian (horned) dinosaurs in the Lower Cretaceous of North America primarily comprises isolated teeth and postcrania of limited taxonomic resolution, hampering previous efforts to reconstruct the early evolution of this group in North America. An associated cranium and lower jaw from the Cloverly Formation (?middle-late Albian, between 104 and 109 million years old...