Derived features of a new boreosphenidan mammal from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China suggest that it has a closer relationship to metatherians (including extant marsupials) than to eutherians (including extant placentals). This fossil dates to 125 million years ago and extends the record of marsupial relatives with skeletal remains by 50 million years. It also has many foot struc...

Lower Cretaceous fossils from central Niger document the succession of sauropod dinosaurs on Africa as it drifted into geographic isolation. A new broad-toothed genus of Neocomian age ( approximately 135 million years ago) shows few of the specializations of other Cretaceous sauropods. A new small-bodied sauropod of Aptian-Albian age ( approximately 110 million years ago), in contrast, reveals ...

The evolution of eusociality is one of the major transitions in the history of life, particularly in the insects. Now, fossil termites and ants from Burmese amber offer insights into early stages of eusociality in the Lower Cretaceous.

The exogenic sulfur cycle is tightly coupled with the carbon and oxygen cycles, and therefore a central component of Earth's biogeochemistry. Here we present a high-resolution record of the sulfur isotopic composition of seawater sulfate for the Cretaceous. The general enrichment of isotopically light sulfur that prevailed during the Cretaceous may have been due to increased volcanic and hydrot...

The Tirgan Formation (Barremian – Aptian) is exposed in the Kopet Dagh in northeast Iran. One stratigraphic section in Zavin was measured with a thickness of 110 meters. This Formation in section consists of three parts (including lower carbonate, limy shale – marl and upper carbonate rocks). Based on the study of 94 thin sections, 10 carbonate and 2 siliciclastic lithofacies have been identifi...

We describe the first beetle mite (Oribatida) found in lower Albian (Lower Cretaceous) amber-bearing site of Ariño, located Teruel Province (eastern Iberian Peninsula). It represents fossil record family Liacaridae (Acariformes: Oribatida: Gustavioidea). A new species, Liacarus (Procorynetes) shtanchaevae Arillo and Subías sp. nov., is described compared with living species subgenus (Procorynet...

The Cambridge Greensand Member (lower Cenomanian: Upper Cretaceous) has yielded a diverse fauna of terrestrial and marine tetrapods, whose remains are largely reworked from the underlying Gault Formation (upper Albian: Lower Cretaceous). Here, we re-describe two non-avian dinosaur taxa named this unit, ‘Eucercosaurus tanyspondylus’ Seeley, 1879 ‘Syngonosaurus macrocercus’ 1879, both which have ...