We report a new Paleogene primate community discovered in the uppermost part of the Samlat Formation outcropping on the continental shore of the Rio de Oro, east of the Dakhla peninsula (in the south of Morocco, near the northern border of Mauritania). Fossils consist of isolated teeth, which were extracted by wet screening of estuarine sediments (DAK C) dating from the earliest Oligocene (ca. 33.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWarmer temperatures and higher sea level than today characterized the Last Interglacial interval [Pleistocene, 128 to 116 thousand years ago (ka)]. This period is a remarkable deep-time analog for temperature and sea-level conditions as projected for 2100 AD, yet there has been no evidence of fossil assemblages in the equatorial Atlantic. Here, we report foraminifer, metazoan (mollusks, bony fish, bryozoans, decapods, and sharks among others), and plant communities of coastal tropical marine and mangrove affinities, dating precisely from a ca.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSharks occupy all living environments of the marine realm as well as some freshwater systems. They display varied and flexible feeding behaviours, but understanding their diet remains challenging due to their elusive ecology and the invasiveness of stomach content analyses in regard of their threatened status. As a potential alternative, we discuss the variability in δCa values recorded in the tooth enamel of size-graded individuals belonging to three species of large sharks with distinct diets (Isurus oxyrinchus, Hexanchus griseus and Carcharodon carcharias).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSibert and Rubin (Reports, 4 June 2021, p. 1105) claim to have identified a previously unidentified, major extinction event of open-ocean sharks in the early Miocene. We argue that their interpretations are based on an experimental design that does not account for a considerable rise in the sedimentation rate coinciding with the proposed event, nor for intraspecific variation in denticle morphology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElasmobranchii is a clade of chondrichthyans (cartilaginous fishes) that comprises sharks, skates and rays represented today by approximately 1,200 species. Chondrichthyans have a long evolutionary history dating back to the Late Ordovician (ca. 450 million years ago [Mya]) based on isolated dermal denticles (Janvier 1996).
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