Article history: Alkenone-based Cenozoic r Received 30 November 2007 Received in revised form 26 February 2008 Accepted 4 March 2008 Available online 18 March 2008 Editor: R.D. van der Hilst

Ecology, evolution, and historical events all contribute to biogeographic patterns, but studies that integrate them are scarce. Here we focus on how biotic exchanges of mammals during the Late Cenozoic have contributed to current geographic body size patterns. We explore differences in the environmental correlates and phylogenetic patterning of body size between groups of mammals participating ...

Cenozoic climates have varied across a variety of time-scales, including slow, unidirectional change over tens of millions of years, as well as severe, geologically abrupt shifts in Earth's climatic state. Establishing the history of atmospheric carbon dioxide is critical in prioritizing the factors responsible for past climatic events, and integral in positioning future climate change within a...

Fossil and phylogenetic evidence indicates legume-rich modern tropical forests replaced Late Cretaceous palm-dominated tropical forests across four continents during the early Cenozoic (58-42 Ma). Tropical legume trees can transform ecosystems via their ability to fix dinitrogen (N2) and higher leaf N compared with non-legumes (35-65%), but it is unclear how their evolutionary rise contributed ...

Microbial corrosion textures in volcanic glass from Cenozoic seafloor basalts and the corresponding titanite replacement microtextures in metamorphosed Paleoarchean pillow lavas have been interpreted as evidence for a deep biosphere dating back in time through the earliest periods of preserved life on earth. This interpretation has been recently challenged for Paleoarchean titanite replacement ...

Equisetum is described for the first time from Cenozoic deposits of New Zealand. The fossils derive from two early to earliest middle Miocene assemblages in South Island, New Zealand. The fossils are ascribed tentatively to subgenus Equisetum based on their possession of whorled branch scars, but they cannot be assigned with confidence to a formal species. The decline of equisetaleans, otherwis...