The upper dentition of two Australian early Miocene mystacinids, Icarops paradox and I. aenae, from Riversleigh, Queensland, are described for the first time. Also recognised is a late Oligocene mystacinid from Lake Palankarinna, South Australia. The new fossils help refine understanding about the evolutionary history of mystacinids in Australia, including their temporal and geographical range,...

Mass-transport deposits reveal something of the timing, source areas and depositional processes that contributed to the evolution of the New Jersey continental margin. Many of the mass-transport deposits rest upon prominent stratal surfaces and sequence boundaries permitting evaluation of the relationship between mass wasting and eustatic change. Five distinct mass-transport facies representati...

High quality 3D seismic data are used to assess the significance of mass-transport deposits (MTDs) to the evolution of the Pearl River Mouth Basin (South China Sea). Basal shear surfaces and lateral margins of seven recurrent MTDs are mapped to reveal a general NE-SW transport direction throughout the Late Miocene-Quaternary. A key result of our analysis is the perceived relationship between th...

Australia has a fossil record of penguins reaching back to the Eocene, yet today is inhabited by just one breeding species, the little penguin Eudyptula minor. The description of recently collected penguin fossils from the re-dated upper Miocene Port Campbell Limestone of Portland (Victoria), in addition to reanalysis of previously described material, has allowed the Cenozoic history of penguin...

During the latest Miocene and the early Pliocene, tetraconodontine suids were the most predominant large omnivorous mammals in Africa. Yet, new species were often identified on the grounds of limited evidence, a situation impacting their value for biochronological correlations as well as for environmental and biogeographical reconstructions. The description of the most abundant known collection...

Rodents are the most speciose group of mammals and display a great ecological diversity. Despite the greater amount of ecomorphological information compiled for extant rodent species, studies usually lack of morphological data on dentition, which has led to difficulty in directly utilizing existing ecomorphological data of extant rodents for paleoecological reconstruction because teeth are the ...

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...

BACKGROUND Old World vultures are likely polyphyletic, representing two subfamilies, the Aegypiinae and Gypaetinae, and some genera of the latter may be of independent origin. Evidence concerning the origin, as well as the timing of the divergence of each subfamily and even genera of the Gypaetinae has been elusive. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Compared with the Old World, the New World has...