The lizard’s hefty size helped confirm the elevated global temperature during a period known as the Paleocene greenhouse. “This would be a globally warmed time in Earth’s history, where ...

The diversity of mammals on Earth exploded straight after the dinosaur extinction event, according to new research. New analysis of the fossil record shows that placental mammals, the group that ...

The only way ancient ectotherms could get as big as they did would be for them to live in a hot climate, and the world was indeed much hotter during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

The researchers performed CT scans on fossils of 28 Paleocene mammal specimens and 96 from the subsequent Eocene Epoch, spanning 56-34 million years ago. They assessed brain size and the ...

Fifty-five million years ago, Earth’s thermostat shot up—and life dramatically changed. Here’s what history can teach us about our modern temperature surge.

During the Paleocene Epoch, a chaotic chapter of Earth’s history that began after the cataclysmic asteroid strike 66 million years ago that doomed the dinosaurs, ...

From Boston, at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. Global warming kicked off the Eocene epoch about 55 million years ago, but new research shows that this greenhouse phase ...

What did the earth look like during the Paleocene Epoch? A Smithsonian researcher investigates. Scott L. Wing. July 12, 2011. Get our newsletter! Get our newsletter! Maura McCarthy.

Skeleton shows Mixodectes pungens lived in trees and primarily ate leaves during the Paleocene epoch, highlighting its unique ecological niche after the dinosaurs. Discovering the leaf-eating ...