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During the early Paleocene, flora were relatively diverse with little predation from insects, even 1.7 million years after the extinction event. [ 82 ] [ 83 ] Studies of the size of the ichnotaxon Naktodemasis bowni , produced by either cicada nymphs or beetle larvae, over the course of the K-Pg transition show that the Lilliput effect occurred ...
Multituberculates, a now-extinct rodent-like group not closely related to any modern mammal, were the most successful group of mammals in the Mesozoic, and they reached peak diversity in the early Paleocene. During this time, multituberculate taxa had a wide range of dental complexity, which correlates to a broader range in diet for the group ...
Nevertheless, much of the research occurring during this period lacked rigor, evidential support or depended on tenuous assumptions. [8] Michael J. Benton called the years between 1920 and 1970 the "Dilettante Phase" of Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction research. [4]
Gondwana had begun to break up during the Jurassic Period, but its fragmentation accelerated during the Cretaceous and was largely complete by the end of the period. South America , Antarctica , and Australia rifted away from Africa (though India and Madagascar remained attached to each other until around 80 million years ago); thus, the South ...
During the cooling period, benthic oxygen isotopes show the possibility of ice creation and ice increase during this later cooling. [54] The end of the Eocene and beginning of the Oligocene is marked with the massive expansion of area of the Antarctic ice sheet that was a major step into the icehouse climate. [ 106 ]
Titanoboa, the largest known snake, lived in South America during the Paleocene. The Eocene Epoch ranged from 56 million to 34 million years ago. In the early Eocene, most land mammals were small and living in cramped jungles, much like the Paleocene. Among them were early primates, whales and horses along with many other early forms of mammals ...
The U.S. space agency's robotic OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2020 collected the samples from the near-Earth asteroid, a rocky remnant of a larger celestial body that had formed near the dawn of the ...
During the Permian all Earth's major landmasses, except portions of East Asia, were collected into a single supercontinent known as Pangaea. Pangaea straddled the equator and extended toward the poles, with a corresponding effect on ocean currents in the single great ocean ( Panthalassa , the universal sea ), and the Paleo-Tethys Ocean , a ...