Functional diversity based on species traits is a powerful tool to investigate how changes in species richness and composition affect ecosystem functioning. However, studies aimed at understanding changes in functional diversity over large temporal and spatial scales are still scant. Here we evaluate the combined effect of diversification and species sorting on functional diversity of fossil ma...

14 Temperature reconstructions indicate that the Pliocene was ~ 3 °C warmer globally 15 than today, and several recent reconstructions of Pliocene atmospheric CO2 indicate 16 that it was above pre-industrial levels and similar to those likely to be seen this 17 century. However, many of these reconstructions have been of relatively low temporal 18 resolution, meaning that these records may have...

Fossil catfishes from fluvio-lacustrine facies of late Miocene Urumaco, early Pliocene Castilletes and late Pliocene San Gregorio formations provide evidence of a hydrographic connection in what is today desert regions of northern Colombia and Venezuela. New discoveries and reevaluation of existing materials leads to the recognition of two new records of the pimelodid Brachyplatystoma cf. vaill...

Coralline red algae are highly abunadant and well diversified in the well exposed carbonate deposits of the Lower Pliocene Shagra Formation at Wadi Wizer, Red Sea coast, Egypt. Lithostratigraphically, the Shagra Formation unconformably overlies the Late Miocene Marsa Alam Formation and underlies the Quaternary deposits. This carbonate facies is dominated by different assemblage of coralline red...

The extent and behaviour of glaciers during the mid-Piacenzian warm period illustrate the sensitivity of the cryosphere to atmospheric CO2 concentrations above pre-industrial levels. Knowledge of glaciation during this period is restricted to globally or regionally averaged records from marine sediments and to sparse terrestrial glacial deposits in mid-to-high latitudes. Here we expand the Plio...

Instrumental records reveal that the current rate of Arctic warming greatly exceeds mean global warming. However, Arctic temperatures during the Pliocene were considerably warmer than present, making it an excellent time period for investigating potential consequences of current warming trends. Here we focus on an early Pliocene (4 to 5 Ma) peat deposit from Ellesmere Island, characterized by a...

An essential element of modern ocean circulation and climate is the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which includes deep-water formation in the subarctic North Atlantic. However, a comparable overturning circulation is absent in the Pacific, the world's largest ocean, where relatively fresh surface waters inhibit North Pacific deep convection. We present complementary measure...

A number of studies have shown that Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIRS) can be applied to quantitatively assess lacustrine sediment constituents. In this study, we developed calibration models based on FTIRS for the quantitative determination of biogenic silica (BSi; n= 420; gradient: 0.9–56.5 %), total organic carbon (TOC; n= 309; gradient: 0–2.9 %), and total inorganic carbon (TIC...

Global climate change, linked to astronomical forcing factors, has been implicated in faunal evolutionary change in equatorial Africa, including the origin and diversification of hominin lineages. Empirical terrestrial data demonstrating that orbital forcing has a significant effect, or is detectable, at early hominin sites in equatorial continental interiors during the Pliocene, however, remai...

The Bohai Basin was transformed to an inner shelf sea hundreds of thousands years ago. This youngest land-sea transition participated in the significant modification of the distribution of fresh water, sediment fluxes and climate in East Asia, and played an important role in the origin of the Asian marginal seas. Here we present the results of a magnetostratigraphic investigation and propose a ...