[1] Existing paleogeographic reconstructions indicate that the northern Antarctic Peninsula was central to several Mesozoic and Cenozoic tectonic events that have implications for ocean circulation and continental margin evolution. To evaluate the exhumational record of these processes, we collected new samples and measured fission track and (U‐Th)/He cooling ages of apatite and zircon from 13 ...

Chelonians are ectothermic, with an extensive fossil record preserved in diverse palaeoenvironmental settings: consequently, they represent excellent models for investigating organismal response to long-term environmental change. We present the first Mesozoic chelonian taxic richness curve, subsampled to remove geological/collection biases, and demonstrate that their palaeolatitudinal distribut...

Parasites are common in modern ecosystems and are also known from the fossil record. One of the best preserved and easily recognisable examples of parasitism in the fossil record concerns isopod-induced swellings in the branchial chamber of marine decapod crustaceans. However, very limited quantitative data on the variability of infestation percentages at the species, genus, and family levels a...

Titanosaurs are the only sauropod dinosaurs known to bear a dermal armor. Their osteoderms are relatively rare finds, with few more than a hundred specimens recovered worldwide. Also, little is known about their intra-individual, intra-specific or inter-specific variability. The macrovertebrate site of Lo Hueco (Upper Cretaceous; Cuenca, Spain) has yielded several complete specimens of osteoder...

This paper discusses the lithostratigraphy of the Xinminbao Group in the Mazongshan area of Gansu Province, northwestern China, and the correlation of its biota. The Xinminbao Group was deposited in a fluviolacustrine setting in Mesozoic graben basins under a semi-arid, subtropical climate. The fossil sites concentrated in the lower part of the group have yielded dinosaurs, mammals and other ve...

The Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous shallow water platform carbonates of the Northern Calcareous Alps (Plassen Formation, “Lärchberg Formation”) and the resedimented deposits of the latter within basinal series (Barmstein Limestone, Tressenstein Limestone) are currently under re-investigation (SCHLAGINTWEIT et al., 2003; GAWLICK et al., 2005). This shallow water development is directly linke...

The Sungun  copper  porphyry deposit is hosted by a Tertiary magmatic complex in  the  Azarbayjan province , northwestern Iran. The  Sungan mine  in its southern and eastern parts is limited  by early Miocene volcanic and by Late Cretaceous limestone rocks in northern and eastern parts respectively . The Sungun  deposit is associated with a suite of porphyritic granitoids and late dikes intrudi...

Recent model-based phylogenetic approaches have expanded upon the incorporation of extinct lineages and their respective temporal information for calibrating divergence date estimates. Here, model-based methods are explored to estimate divergence dates and ancestral ranges for titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs, an extinct and globally distributed terrestrial clade that existed during the extensi...