India's Late Cretaceous fossil mammals include the only undisputed pre-Tertiary Gondwanan eutherians, such as Deccanolestes. Recent studies have suggested a relationship between Deccanolestes and African and European Paleocene adapisoriculids, which have been variably identified as stem euarchontans, stem primates, lipotyphlan insectivores, or afrosoricids. Support for a close relationship betw...

Multimillion-year proxy records across the Paleocene and Eocene show prominent variations on orbital time scales. The cycles, which have been identified at various sites across the globe, preferentially concentrate spectral power at eccentricity and precessional frequencies. It is evident that these cycles are an expression of changes in global climate and carbon cycling paced by astronomical f...

Thuja, a genus of Cupressaceae comprising five extant species, presently occurs in both East Asia (3 species) and North America (2 species) and has a long fossil record from Paleocene to Pleistocene in the Northern Hemisphere. Two distinct hypotheses have been proposed to account for the origin and present distribution of this genus. Here we recognize and describe T. sutchuenensis Franch., a ne...

Modern Neotropical rainforests are characterized by the high intensity and host specificity with which insects feed on plants. Previous studies have shown that, during middle–late Paleocene, leaves of early evolving tropical South America were heavily herbivorized insects. Yet, less attention has been given to insect damage found fossil fruits seeds, despite specialization many disseminule pred...

The Nanxiong Basin (Guangdong Province, China) preserves the most complete Asian stratigraphic record of the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary extinction and the subsequent Paleocene mammalian radiation. Despite extensive study, the precise placement of the K/Pg boundary in the Nanxiong Basin sequence has been controversial, and the timing of subsequent mammalian turnover is poorly constrain...

A new species of phantom crane flies (Ptychopteridae: Bittacomorphinae), Probittacomorpha brisaci n. sp., is described based on a single specimen from the Late Miocene volcano-sedimentary paleolake of Montagne d’Andance (Saint Bauzile, Ardèche, France). This is the second known species of the fossil genus Probittacomorpha. Previously described species has been found in the Paleocene-Eocene Fur-...

Paleosecuridaca curtisii Pigg, DeVore, and Wojciechowski gen. et sp. nov. (Polygalaceae) is described for anatomically preserved, nonschizocarpic, asymmetric samaras from the Late Paleocene (Tiffanian 3) Almont and Beicegel Creek floras of North Dakota. Paleosecuridaca is quite similar to the extant genus Securidaca L. (Polygalaceae) but has several distinctive features that warrant the establi...

Throughout the Phanerozoic, estimated CO2 levels from proxies generally correlate well with independent estimates of temperature. However, some proxy atmospheric during Late Cretaceous and early Paleocene are low (<400 ppm), seemingly at odds elevated sea surface Here we evaluate by applying a leaf gas-exchange model to Platanites leaves four localities San Juan Basin, New Mexico (65.66–64.59 M...

Cretaceous multituberculate mammals of Europe are poorly known, as a rule represented by isolated teeth. The only exception is the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) monotypic genus Kogaionon Riidulescu & Samson, 1996 from Romania, represented by a single skull, without dentaries, assigned to Kogaionidae Rhdulescu & Samson, 1996, Another kogaionid genus is Hainina Vianey-Liaud, 1979, represented b...