A large number of terrestrial mammalian fossils were reported in the well-exposed Paleogene and Neogene fluvio-lacustrine strata in Western China. Their accurate ages are crucial to understand the mammalian and environmental evolution associated with the step-wise uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. At present their ages are surprisingly poorly constrained. Here, we present a high-resolution magneto...

Platycladus Spach is native to Central China, but its natural occurrences are very difficult to establish. According to molecular phylogenetic data, this genus might have originated since the Oligocene, but no fossil record has been reported. Here, we describe eight foliage branches from the upper Miocene in western Yunnan, Southwest China as a new species, P. yunnanensis sp. nov., which is cha...

T of woodpeckers and allies (Pici) is very poor, but the members of this group—barbets and toucans (Ramphastidae including “Capitonidae”; see Prum 1988); honeyguides (Indicatoridae); and woodpeckers, wrynecks, and piculets (Picidae)—today have an almost worldwide distribution and occur in most forested habitats (del Hoyo et al. 2002). Paleogene (pre-Miocene; i.e. older than 23 Ma) remains of th...

Today coral reefs are threatened by changes to seawater conditions associated with rapid anthropogenic global climate change. Yet, since the Cenozoic, these organisms have experienced major fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 levels (from greenhouse conditions of high pCO2 in the Eocene to low pCO2 ice-house conditions in the Oligocene-Miocene) and a dramatically changing ocean Mg/Ca ratio. Here we...

New compression leaf material of Ceratozamia (Zamiaceae) has been recognised in the European Cenozoic. A leaflet of Ceratozamia floersheimensis (Engelhardt) Kvaček was recovered among unidentified material from the Oligocene of Trbovlje, former Trifail, Slovenia, housed in old collections of the Austrian Geological Survey, Vienna. It is similar in morphology and epidermal anatomy to other speci...

We review examples of placement of select Cenozoic Global Boundary Stratotype Sections and Points (GSSP = “golden spikes”) from a geochemical and magnetostratigraphic perspective. Though biostratigraphy is the sine qua non for placing modern chronologic tools (high-resolution radiometric dates, magnetochronology, and astrochronology) into proper stratigraphic context, its use as the primary cor...

a total of 12 species of marine gastropods, among which two taxa are new, is reported for the first time from the miocene deposits of khavich section, south of sirjan, kerman. gastropods assemblage in khavich area indicates deposition in shallow, warm ramp-type carbonate platform. the miocene and even oligocene gastropod assemblages, relatively similar to khavich section, reported from the othe...

At Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 1090 (lat 42 54.8 S, long 8 54.0 E) located in a water depth of 3702 m on the Agulhas Ridge in the sub-Antarctic South Atlantic, 300 m of middle Eocene to middle Miocene sediments were recovered with the advanced piston corer (APC) and the extended core barrel (XCB). U-channel samples from the 70–230 meters composite depth (mcd) interval provide a magnetic p...

This study documents diversity decline in a once-speciose rodent clade, the family Aplodontidae, and evaluates the potential influence of three commonly suggested controls on diversity: climate change, floral change, and competitive interactions. Aplodontids first appeared in the late Eocene, diversified during the early Oligocene, declined precipitously at the end of the Oligocene such that st...

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,...