Balaenidae (right and bowhead whales) are a key group in understanding baleen whale evolution, because they are the oldest surviving lineage of crown Mysticeti, with a fossil record that dates back ∼20 million years. However, this record is mostly Pliocene and younger, with most of the Miocene history of the clade remaining practically unknown. The earliest recognized balaenid is the early Mioc...

Geochemical investigations have permitted the refinement of the environmental interpretation of the f-Member of the Qum formation, Central Basin, Iran, which has been established through detailed microfacies (MF) analysis. The analysis revealed that the f-Member carbonates consist of eight distinct microfacies designated by the letters A through H. On the basis of petrographic characteristi...

The Lower Miocene deposits in Gabal Gharra, Cairo – Suez District, unconformably overlies the Oligocene and Eocene deposits. They consist predominantly of regressive and transgressive mixed siliciclastic / carbonate sediments of shallow marine environments. The Lower Miocene deposits are represented lithostratigraphically by the Gharra Formation that comprises four members, from base to top: Ag...

Yongle atoll in the Xisha (Paracel) Archipelago is an isolated carbonate platform developed on Precambrian metamorphic and Mesozoic volcanic rocks since early Miocene. To identify 3D stratigraphic architecture evolution of this platform, 13 high-resolution seismic profiles shallow-to-deep water multi-beam data were processed analyzed to reveal facies, sequence boundary reflectors, units, archit...

Mylagaulid fossorial rodents are a common component of North American Miocene fossil faunas. However outside of North America, only three species are known from Asia. Here we report two new mylagaulids, Irtyshogaulus minor gen. et sp. nov. and Irtyshogaulus major gen. et sp. nov., recovered from early Miocene sediments in the Junggar Basin in northwestern China. The two new taxa are small-sized...

The lower Miocene Pirabas Formation in the North of Brazil was deposited under influence of the proto-Amazon River and is characterized by large changes in the ecological niches from the early Miocene onwards. To evaluate these ecological changes, the elasmobranch fauna of the fully marine, carbonate-rich beds was investigated. A diverse fauna with 24 taxa of sharks and rays was identified with...

Paleogeographical considerations on the development of the Paratethys and the Mediterranean during Oligocene and Miocene are presented in twelve time-slices. Plate tectonic activities and the collision of India with Asia caused the destruction of the Western Tethys Ocean in the Late Eocene. The Mediterranean and the intracontinental Paratethys basins came into existence as new marine realms. In...

—The subfamily Equinae in the Great Plains region of North America underwent a dramatic radiation and subsequent decline as climate changed from warm and humid in the middle Miocene to cooler and more arid conditions during the late Miocene. Here we use ecological niche modeling (ENM), specifically the GARP (Genetic Algorithm using Rule-set Prediction) modeling system, to reconstruct the geogra...