X-Nico

7 unusual facts about Eocene


Geography of Bahrain

4) Eocene limestone covering most of the island, the central region of which, known as “Jabal Dukhār “Mountain of Smoke”, rises to a point 439 feet above sea level.

Geography of the Cayman Islands

The Cayman Rise extends from southeastern Cuba along the northern margin of the Cayman Trough toward Costa Rica and resulted from Paleocene to Eocene island arc formation with associated volcanism along an extinct subduction zone.

Moleropterix

It is described from a well preserved forewing of the Fur Formation of the earliest Eocene (Early Ypresian) of Denmark.

Psephophorus terrypratchetti

Psephophorus terrypratchetti is a species of Eocene turtle identified from the fossil record.

Rock Springs Uplift

The Rock Springs Uplift is an area of uplifted Cretaceous to Eocene rocks in Wyoming surrounded and once covered by sediments of the Green River Formation which were deposited in the Eocene Lake Gosiute.

Tilia johnsoni

Fossil pollen assigned to the genus has been recognized from the Palaeocene - Eocene boundary.

Willwood Formation

The Willwood Formation is a sedimentary sequence deposited during the late Paleocene to early Eocene.


Acer ashwilli

When first studied by Leo Lesquereux and John Strong Newberry the Bridge Creek flora was thought to be Miocene age, while Frank Hall Knowlton placed the flora into the Eocene Clarno Formation in 1902.

Afrasia djijidae

The largest eosimiid, Bahinia, is from the Pondaung Formation, the same stratum as Afrasia, and the morphology of its molars bridges the gap between the more primitive molars of Eosimias and the more derived molars of the later Eocene African simians.

Agroecomyrmex

Since its description two other related genera have been described, the late Eocene genus Eulithomyrmex from the Florissant Formation of Colorado, and the living genus Tatuidris from Central and South America.

Albertonykus

Ants were not an important part of the ecosystem during the Cretaceous, and mound-building termites do not appear until the Eocene.

Aracanidae

The family is represented in the fossil record by the extinct genus Proaracana with the single species P. dubia known from the Middle Eocene of Italy.

Berteaucourt-lès-Thennes

The soil around the town comprises alluvial deposits in the valley of the Luce, the small river that separates Berteaucourt from Thennes, red diluvium around the school and out towards Thézy-Glimont, chalk towards the slopes and Eocene clay on the higher ground.

Bracklesham Group

E. Edwards and SV Wood, Monograph of Eocene Mollusca, Palaeontographical Soc.

Charactosuchus

In 1969, a lower jaw of a crocodilian that dated back to the Lutetian stage of the Eocene was found in Saint James Parish, Jamaica, and was described as belonging to a new species of Charactosuchus named C. kugleri.

Chrysichthys

Chrysichthys macrotis, Van Neer, 1994, is known from the Miocene-Pliocene of the Albertine Rift in Uganda and Chrysichthys mahengeensis, Murray & Budney, 2003, is known from the Eocene of Mahenge, Tanzania.

Enniskillenus

Enniskillenus (named after the Northern Irish village of Enniskillen) is a genus of prehistoric fish from the Eocene.

Eogavialis

The genus was first described by Charles William Andrews in 1901 when Andrews named a new species of Tomistoma, T. africanum, on the basis of a specimen found from an outcrop of the Qasr el-Sagha Formation in Egypt, about 20 miles northwest of Faiyum, dating back to the Priabonian stage of the late Eocene 37.2 to 33.9 million years ago.

Eothynnus

Eothynnus salmonens is an extinct species of prehistoric jackfish that lived during the lower Eocene of what is now the Isle of Sheppey (as a part of the London Clay Lagerstatten.

Eucommia

Eucommia rolandii (Early-Middle Eocene; Mississippi and British Columbia)

Eucommia montana

Fossils of the Middle Eocene outcrops near Quilchena, British Columbia added to the northern range of the species and are associated with a second species of Eucommia, E. rowlandii.

E. montana is known from fossil fruits found in Eocene deposits of the northwestern United States southeastern British Columbia south to Oregon and east to Montana and Colorado.

European Cenozoic Rift System

The system began to form during the Late Eocene and parts, particularly the Upper and Lower Rhine Grabens, remain seismically active today and are responsible for most of the larger earthquakes in Europe, north of the Alps.

Fish egg fossil

A less likely candidate mother would be the genus Scyliorhinus, which also has a fossil record stretching back to the Eocene.

Geology of Essex

Isolated patches of later Eocene sand, silt and clay occur in the area between Southend on Sea, Chelmsford and London.

Geology of Hertfordshire

The most important formations are the Cretaceous chalks, which are exposed as the high ground in the north and west of the county, and the Cenozoic rocks made up of the Paleocene age Reading beds and Eocene age London Clay that occupies the remaining southern part.

Gérard Paul Deshayes

His studies on the relations of the fossil to the recent species led him as early as 1829 to conclusions somewhat similar to those arrived at by Lyell, to whom Deshayes rendered much assistance in connection with the classification of the, then, Tertiary system into Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene.

Hemerobiidae

Bothromicromus Scudder, 1878 (Eocene/Oligocene; Quesnel, British Columbia)

Murgon fossil site

The Murgon fossil site is a paleontological site of early Eocene age in south-eastern Queensland, Australia.

Nothofagus fusca

Pollen from the tree was found near the Antarctic Peninsula showing that it formerly grew in Antarctica since the Eocene period.

Oswald Heer

In 1863 (with William Pengelly, Phil. Trans., 1862) he investigated the plant-remains from the lignite-deposits of Bovey Tracey in Devon, regarding them as of Miocene age; but they are now classed as Eocene.

Palaeeudyptes

The other described New Zealand species, P. marplesi, is known from parts of a skeleton, mainly leg bones, from the Middle or Late Eocene Burnside Mudstone (34 to 40 MYA) at Burnside, Dunedin.

Palaeeudyptes marplesi

This species is known from a partial skeleton, mainly leg bones (Otago Museum C.50.25 to C.50.45), recovered from Middle or Late Eocene Burnside Mudstone rocks (34-40 MYA) at Burnside, Dunedin.

Papilionoidea

Prodryas, from the end of the Eocene, can be quite robustly assigned to the Nymphalidae, and is in fact quite likely a member of the Nymphalini.

Taken together, these fossils place the origin of the Papilionoidea in the latest Mesozoic or early Paleogene, while the extant families emerged approximately the early Eocene onwards.

Presbyornis

recurvirostris is a disputed species possibly synonymous with P. pervetus; it is known from a partial wing (KUVP 10105) found in Colton Formation Eocene sediments of the Wasatch Plateau near Ephraim, Utah.

Protitanops

Protitanops ("Before Titan's Face") was a genus of brontothere that lived during the Eocene, in the Western United States, especially in Death Valley, California, where the best specimens of the species P. curryi have been found.

Pteridospermatophyta

Pteridosperms declined during the Mesozoic Era and had mostly disappeared by the end of the Cretaceous Period, though some pteridosperm-like plants seem to have survived into Eocene times, fossilized in Tasmania.

Sevier orogeny

The Sevier fold and thrust belt was active between late Jurassic through Eocene time.

Strigogyps

In 1987, Peters named another monospecific genus of ameghinornithid, Aenigmavis sapea, based on a nearly complete skeleton from the Middle Eocene Messel pit of Germany.

Tetracentron

Specimens from British Columbia and Washington state are found in a series of Eocene Lakes in the Okanagan Highlands region in association with several extinct Trochodendron species.

Todea

So far the fossil record of the genus Todea consists only of the permineralized rhizome Todea tidwellii from the Lower Cretaceous of Vancouver Island, Canada and the species Todea amissa, known from the Eocene of Patagonia, Argentinia.

Tytonidae

Placement of the Late Eocene/Early Oligocene genera Palaeotyto and Palaeobyas from Quercy (France) in this family is tentative; they might belong to the Sophiornithidae instead.


see also