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IN ENGLISH Premise of the Study Cretaceous Cornales provide a crucial record of the early history of asterids. Most lineages of the order are well represented in the fossil record, but South African families of Curtisiaceae and Grubbiaceae remain poorly understood. Seventy‐three specimens of a fossil infructescence belonging to the genus Operculifructus Estrada‐Ruiz & Cevallos‐Ferriz emend. Hayes & Smith from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) El Gallo Formation, Baja California, Mexico bear previously undescribed characters that suggest a relationship to Grubbiaceae. Methods Microstructures of the fossils were examined through light microscopy and x‐ray microcomputed tomography (microCT) scanning. Modern Grubbia tomentosa (Thunb.) Harms fruits were scanned for comparison to the fossil material. Phylogenetic analyses using the 77 fruit characters of Atkinson () were performed to test relationships of the fossil to major lineages of the order. Several analyses applied topological constraints to the extant taxa, based on various genetically supported hypotheses of relationship within Cornales. Key Results Novel structures of Operculifructus newly observed here include (1) anatropous ovules, (2) drupaceous fruits, (3) an epigynous disc, (4) and a stylar canal in the center of the disc aligned with the micropylar protrusion of the seed. Phylogenetic analysis consistently resolves Operculifructus as sister to Grubbiaceae. Conclusions Operculifructus provides direct evidence for the occurrence of Grubbiaceae in the Late Cretaceous, much older than previous Eocene evidence. The phylogeny of Atkinson () indicates that the new phylogenetic position recovered for Operculifructus also establishes the presence of the most basal drupaceous cornalean fruits in North America by the Campanian. RESUMEN EN ESPAÑOL Hipótesis de la Investigación Cornales cretácicos representan un registro esencial en la historia de los astéridos. Casi todos los linajes del orden están bien representados en el registro fósil, pero las familias africanas sureñas Curtisiaceae y Grubbiaceae permanecen pobremente entendidas. Setenta y tres ejemplares de una infrutescencia fósil perteneciente al género Operculifructus Estrada‐Ruiz & Cevallos‐Ferriz emend. Hayes & Smith de la formación campaniana (Cretácico Tardío) El Gallo, Baja California, México, poseen caracteres no descritos previamente y sugieren una relación con Grubbiaceae. Metodología Microestructuras de los fósiles fueron examinadas con microscopio de luz y microtomografía computarizada (micro‐CT) de rayos X. Frutos actuales de Grubbia tomentosa (Thunb.) Harms fueron escaneados para su comparación con el material fósil. Se realizaron análisis filogenéticos usando los 77 caracteres de frutos de Atkinson () para probar las relaciones de los fósiles con los linajes principales del orden. En algunos análisis se aplicaron restricciones topológicas a los taxa actuales basándose en varias hipótesis, soportadas genéticamente, de las relaciones dentro de Cornales. Resultados Centrales (Cruciales) Las estructuras novedosas de Operculifructus, recientemente observadas aquí, incluyen (1) óvulos anátropos; (2) frutos drupáceos; (3) disco epígino; y (4) un canal estilar en el centro del disco alineado con la protuberancia micropilar de la semilla. Los análisis filogenéticos consistentemente dan como resultado que Operculifructus es hermano de Grubbiaceae. Conclusiones Operculifructus proporciona evidencia directa de la presencia de Grubbiaceae en el Cretácico Tardío, mucho antes que la previa evidencia en el Eoceno. La filogenia de Atkinson () indica que la nueva posición filogenética recuperada para Operculifructus también resalta la presencia de frutos drupáceos cornaleanos más basales en Norteamérica durante el Campaniano.

Eggs containing well-preserved skeletons were collected from Bugin-tsav, an Upper Cretaceous locality in the Nemegt Formation, Ömnögov' Aimag, Mongolia. These embryos, found in a weathered nest of eggs, are oviraptorid theropods. Eggshell morphotype is Elongatoolithidae, typical of theropods, including basal birds. Bone histology indicates that all embryos were probably close to hatching, based on the degree of ossification and in comparison with ossification patterns in living birds. Maturity of ossification indicates that oviraptorids hatched at a precocial stage of development. Two of the embryos are relatively large, while the other is 25% smaller, suggesting that size disparity of hatchlings in oviraptorids may be a consequence of asynchrony in egg laying.

Exposures of the Chinle Formation in Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO), Arizona, preserve one of the most important Upper Triassic terrestrial faunal assemblages in the world: in it are found key elements in the global and regional correlation of continental deposits of Upper Triassic age. Rare components of the Chinle Formation faunal assemblage, including dinosaurs and small-bodied amniotes, appear to be mostly restricted to distinctive blue-colored horizons observed at only a few sites in PEFO. The blue sites represent paleosols formed in fine-grained, abandoned channel fills and contrast markedly with red-colored floodplain deposits and paleosols that characterize most fossil localities in the Chinle Formation. The distinctive blue color is interpreted as a weathered feature of hydromorphically reduced iron. The coincidence of rare taxa and sites bearing the blue-colored paleosols suggests that the stratigraphic positions of the sites and the rare taxa they contain appear to relate to fluvial sequence tracts in PEFO and may not reflect the true stratigraphic ranges of these taxa.

Recovery of marine biodiversity following the Permo-Triassic extinction is thought to have been delayed relative to other mass extinctions. Terrestrial vertebrate biodiversity is said to have taken as much as 15 Myr longer to recover than the marine. The present study tests, at the scale of an individual fossil community, whether a disparity in biodiversity existed in the American Southwest, between the Moenkopi Formation, containing an early Middle Triassic (Anisian) terrestrial tetrapod fauna, and the Chinle Formation, containing a successor Late Triassic (Norian) tetrapod fauna. Taking Chinle faunal biodiversity to represent full biotic recovery, comparison of taxonomic and guild diversity of faunas from similar depositional and taphonomic environments in these two formations allowed us to assess the possibility of incipient terrestrial recovery of biodiversity in the Anisian. Comparisons were made between the Holbrook Member fauna of the Moenkopi, a unit best characterized as a low-sinuosity medium- to coarse-grained fluvial deposit, and each of four Chinle stratigraphic units, representing fluvial settings from sandy low-sinuosity to muddy high-sinuosity. Three metrics were applied: generic and familial taxonomic diversity and guild diversity; these were compared by rarefaction. Simpson and Shannon diversity metrics augmented the analysis. Units of extraordinary preservation in the Chinle—the so-called blue layers—were removed from the analysis. In all tests the biodiversity of the Holbrook Member fauna is within the variation seen in Chinle faunas. If the results of our study represent global conditions, they suggest that by at least early Anisian time (∼6 Myr after the P/T extinction) biodiversity had reached levels comparable to those seen in the Late Triassic. This potentially brings the terrestrial vertebrate recovery in line with the 4–8 Myr it took for recovery in the marine realm.

Three localities in the Chinle Formation (Late Triassic), Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO), Arizona, provide insights into the paleoenvironments frequented by primitive North American theropods. At the Dinosaur Wash locality, an undetermined theropod is preserved in paleosols that indicate a transition from wet to dry conditions on the flood-plain. Coelophysis bauri remains from the Dinosaur Hill locality are preserved in a filled channel scour. The paleosols at this locality contain carbonate nodules intimately associated with Fe and Mn oxides, indicative of alternating alkaline/acidic conditions around roots in response to a semi-arid climate with strong seasonal precipitation. At the Dinosaur Hollow locality, Chindesaurus bryansmalli is preserved in a setting similar to those encountered at Dinosaur Hill. The paleosols exhibit vertic features, such as pseudoanticlines, and are indicative of water-deficit periods during the year. The most complete theropod remains at PEFO are predominantly preserved in distinctive blue-colored paleosol horizons showing depletion in iron and aluminum, and exhibiting features such as localized Fe concentrations and mottling. These are interpreted as A-horizons of redoximorphic paleosols developed in wet areas of the floodplain where the degree of water saturation fluctuated. Preservational conditions of PEFO theropod localities indicate they are time-averaged attritional mortality assemblages representative of contemporaneous organisms. Comparison of these localities to the well-known Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, Coelophysis quarry reinforces the idea that the quarry represents unique preservational conditions.

Tugrikin-shireh, south-central Gobi Desert, Mongolia, consists of about 1.5 km of west- and northwest-facing exposures that produce a rich vertebrate fauna dominated by the ornithischian dinosaur Protoceratops. The sandstones of Tugrik are thick-bedded (2-9 m) and are distinguished by large-scale (10's to 100's of meters in cross-section), high-angle (28°-34°) trough-cross stratification. The axes of the cross stratification dip east-northeast. These and other sedimentary features indicate eolian deposition, driven by westerly winds. At Tugrik, bedding planes as well as inferred slip faces, are dominated by a complex calcite- and iron-oxide-cemented ichnofauna. At least three different trace fossil types are preserved. A biologically active ecosystem is reflected by the vertebrate body fossil and invertebrate trace fossil assemblages. Protoceratops specimens are commonly found articulated and semi-articulated, and oriented parallel to the maximum dip direction of the sediments in which they are entombed. Limbs are commonly contracted and necks are pulled back, in poses indicative of dessication. In some cases, death probably occurred by suffocation during sand storms, but in other cases, by less dramatic processes. Turgik may constitute the basinward continuation of a nearby brad plain-to-eolian suite of depositional environments. Penecontemporaneous deposits in northern China reveal similar suites of environments, suggesting a uniform depositional response in the region to Late Cretaceous climates.

El estudio de los paleosuelos, junto con la sedimentología, son herramientas útiles en la reconstrucción ambiental de los paisajes antiguos; asimismo han sido utilizados como marcadores estratigráficos para hacer correlaciones locales o para conocer tasas de sedimentación. Los paleosuelos más antiguos corresponden al Precámbrico, sin embargo han sido más estudiados los del Cuaternario. El objetivo del presente trabajo es dar una revisión acerca del uso y aplicaciones de los paleosuelos, con un mayor énfasis en el estudio de las calcretas pedogenéticas y presentar un estudio de caso perteneciente a la barranca Los Bonetes, Michoacán. La barranca Los Bonetes, localizada en el sur-centro de México, contiene sedimentos volcaniclásticos de edad Cretácico Tardío y los hadrosaurios más antiguos conocidos en México. Dentro de esta sucesión volcaniclástica se localizan paquetes de calcretas que, debido a sus características macro- y microestructurales, como son la presencia de raíces y las texturas alfa y beta, fueron reconocidas como de origen pedogenético. Con base en los requerimientos ambientales para la formación de este tipo de paleosuelos, interpretamos que el clima en la región debió ser árido o semiárido durante los periodos de no depósito durante el Cretácico. La importancia de este estudio radica en que es uno de los pocos trabajos en México en el cual se estudian paleosuelos precuaternarios para hacer inferencias climáticas.

Results of a three-year field study of family-level patterns of ecological diversity of dinosaurs in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana and North Dakota show no evidence (probability P < 0.05) of a gradual decline of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous. Stratigraphic reliability was maintained through a tripartite division of the Hell Creek, and preservational biases were corrected for by comparison of results only from similar facies as well as through the use of large-scale, statistically rigorous survey and collection procedures. The findings are in agreement with an abrupt extinction event such as one caused by an asteroid impact.

The disappearance of nonavian dinosaurs is probably the most notorious extinction event of all time, yet it is only a small part of a greater class of extinctions known as “mass extinctions.” Mass extinctions are global events characterized by unusually high rates of extinction. The magnitude of these rates is usually unspecified but it is generally significantly higher than the rate of so-called “background extinctions”; that is, extinctions that occur constantly through geologic time (Raup and Sepkoski 1982). Mass extinctions are also characterized by geologically short timescales and by a significant diminution in the number of surviving taxa, as well