Lizards and snakes putatively arose between the early Jurassic and late Triassic; they diversified worldwide and now occupy many different ecological niches, making them ideal for testing theories on the origin of ecological traits. We propose and test the "deep history hypothesis," which claims that differences in ecological traits among species arose early in evolutionary history of major cla...

During the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, the Newark rift basin of the northeastern US accumulated in excess of 5 km of continental, mostly lacustrine, strata that show a profound cyclicity caused by the astronomical forcing of tropical climate. The Newark record is known virtually in its entirety as a result of scientific and other coring and provides what is arguably one of the longest rec...

Quantitative subsidence analysis of 26 wells in the Lusitanian basin provides new constraints on the western Iberian Mesozoic passive margin development. Backstripped tectonic subsidence curves show a three-fold subdivision of vertical motions from Late Triassic onward. Continental rifting was initiated during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. From Middle Jurassic onward a distinct differen...

The transition during the Permian–Triassic interval from brachiopod-rich benthic marine assemblages to communities with diverse molluscs has been well constrained by measures of global taxonomic richness but its ecological context has not been studied using quantitative relative abundance data. New relative abundance data from Early, Middle, and Late Permian silicified fossil assemblages from o...

Carbon cycle disturbance associated with mass extinction at the end of the Permian Period continued through the Early Triassic, an interval of approximately 5 million years. Coincidence of carbon cycle stabilization with accelerated Middle Triassic biotic recovery suggests a link between carbon cycling and biodiversity, but the cause of Early Triassic carbon isotope excursions remains poorly un...

It has been argued that the beginning of significant pelagic calcification could have linked to Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE), a climate change in Late Triassic (~234–232 Ma) was marked by C-cycle disruption and global warming. Nevertheless, abundant calcareous nannofossils described so far only post-CPE rocks, therefore no conclusive hypotheses can be drawn on possible causal links with it. He...