An 823 m thick glaciomarine Cenozoic section sitting unconformably on the Lower Devonian Beacon Supergroup was recovered in CRP –3. This paper reviews the chronostratigraphical constraints for the Cenozoic section. Between 3 and 480.27 mbsf 23 unconformity bounded cycles of sediment were recorded. Each unconformity is thought to represent a hiatus of uncertain duration. Four magnetozones have b...

Cenozoic plant relicts are those groups that were once widespread in the Northern Hemisphere but are now restricted to some small isolated areas as a result of drastic climatic changes. They are good proxies to study how plants respond to climatic changes since their modern climatic requirements are known. Herein we look at the modern distribution of 65 palaeoendemic genera in China and compare...

Discoveries of fossil remains of 50 million year old alligators on Ellesmere Island and 30}40 million year-old forests on Antarctica contrast sharply with our present vision of polar climates. These are not isolated discoveries or quirks of nature. An evergrowing body of faunal, Soral, and geochemical evidence shows that the Rrst half of the Cenozoic Era was much warmer than the present time. W...

It is proposed that many summit basins along the Aleutian Arc form from the clockwise rotation of blocks of the arc massif. Summit basins are arc-parallel grabens or half-grabens formed within the arc massif and are commonly located near or along the axis of late Cenozoic volcanism. Geomorphically, the Aleutian Arc appears to consist of contiguous rhombic blocks of varying size, tens to hundred...

Pelagic clay of the east-central Pacific province is shown to be a mixture of three primary detrital components, reflecting continental source areas in Asia, North America, and Central and South America. Relative contributions from each source area are a function of geography, and this distribution appears to have remained constant over the past five million years, despite changing flux rates. ...

Synthesis of regional plate movements reveals a major reorganization of global plate motion from Mesozoic to Cenozoic patterns that occurred primarily during the Eocene epoch (53.5 to 37.5 m.y.B.P.). The reorganization involved reorientation of relative plate motions with large N-S components into large E-W components, continuation of pre-existing E-W sea floor spreading, initiation of new E-W ...

The fossil record holds a wealth of ecological data, including data on biotic interactions. For example, holes in the skeletons of invertebrates produced by drilling activities of their enemies are widely used for exploring the intensity of such interactions through time because they are common and easily distinguished from non-biotic holes or holes produced by other types of interactions. Such...

Oceanic oxygen levels are projected to drop in certain areas due to warming climate, but the net effect to the overall ocean redox state is difficult to predict. Here we measured the “stable” uranium isotope composition (U/U) in globally representative hydrogenous ferromanganese crusts in order to reconstruct the redox evolution of the global ocean throughout the Cenozoic. Samples averaging 3 M...

[1] Two of the most popular mechanisms for thickening the crust beneath the Tibetan Plateau are (1) pure shear with faulting and folding in the upper crust and horizontal shortening below and (2) flow of lower or middle crust without significant shortening of the upper crust. To help discriminate between the relative contributions of these two mechanisms, well-constrained estimates of upper cru...

We present a new reconstruction of the mid-Cretaceous (100 Ma) paleogeography of the United States and Canadian Cordillera, based on (a) restoring displacements within the major Late Cretaceous to Cenozoic contractional and extensional belts, and (b) restoring displacements along the major Late Cretaceous to Cenozoic dextral strike-slip faults of the northern Cordillera. The reconstruction move...