Literature Review: The Cenozoic Era

by Carl Strang

This week we look at some recent studies of the time between the Mesozoic Era and the present day. In recent years there has been much interest in the dynamics of climate change across the ages of the Earth.

A huge amount of carbon today is sequestered in the permafrost soils of the North.


Robert M. DeConto, et al. Past extreme warming events linked to massive carbon release from thawing permafrost. Nature, 2012; 484 (7392): 87 DOI: 10.1038/nature10929 They combined modeling with the Earth’s orbital dynamics to show the likelihood that in the Paleocene, when the Earth’s orbit became more eccentric and tilt became greater, this resulted in thawing and decomposition of permafrost, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide and resulting in a positive feedback loop that produced the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Pitcher plants, Big Thicket. The following study traces their origin.


Ellison AM, et al. (2012) Phylogeny and Biogeography of the Carnivorous Plant Family Sarraceniaceae. PLoS ONE 7(6): e39291. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039291 They studied nuclear, mitochondrial and plasmid genes to sort out relationships and evolutionary history of the pitcher plants. They conclude that the family appeared in South America 44-53mya (million years ago, Eocene), and by the end of the Eocene was widespread in North and South America.

G. Grellet-Tinner, et al. (2012) The First Occurrence in the Fossil Record of an Aquatic Avian Twig-Nest with Phoenicopteriformes Eggs: Evolutionary Implications. PLoS ONE 7(10): e46972. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046972 They found fossils of a basal flamingo in association with eggshells and a floating nest that are like those of modern grebes, in an early Miocene shallow-lake wetland with high evaporation, in Spain. Though they agree that there was an earlier split between the grebes and the flamingos, they mention that fossil flamingos are known from the Oligocene, grebes from the Miocene. Apparently the bones are insufficient to provide much of an understanding of this early flamingo’s appearance.

Zhang Z, Feduccia A, James HF (2012) A Late Miocene Accipitrid (Aves: Accipitriformes) from Nebraska and Its Implications for the Divergence of Old World Vultures. PLoS ONE 7(11): e48842. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0048842 They describe a fossil bird from Nebraska that links New World hawks and eagles to the Gypaetinae, one of the subfamilies of Old World vultures. This places the timing of that group’s origin in the Miocene, and supports its evolutionary separation from the other Old World vulture subfamily, the Aegypiinae.

Elderfield, H., et al. 2012. Evolution of ocean temperature and ice volume through the mid-Pleistocene climate transition. Science 337:704-709. (Comment by Peter U. Clark on pp. 656-658 in the same issue). They sorted through various isotopic proxies in marine sediments from New Zealand, and found an association between the mysterious change in ice age periodicity around 900,000 years ago (from cycles of 41,000 years to the more recent cycles of 100,000 years, a change not connected to the Earth orbit fluctuations now known to be the underlying cause of ice age cycling generally) and an increase in the volume of ice around Antarctica. They suggest that “an anomalously low Southern Hemisphere summer insolation” failed to melt the Antarctic ice during one interglacial period, and that the ice added during the following ice age was enough to produce the observed period change. The sea level drop during ice ages changed from 70 meters to 120 meters as a result. Their data also argue against a gradual cooling, from changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, as the primary driver of the periodicity change.

Jeremy D. Shakun, et al. Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation. Nature, 2012; 484 (7392): 49 DOI: 10.1038/nature10915 From an article in ScienceDaily: “Here is what the researchers think happened.



“ʻWhen the heat transport stops, it cools the north and heat builds up in the Southern Hemisphere,ʼ Shakun said. ʻThe Antarctic would have warmed rapidly, much faster than the time it takes to get CO2 out of the deep sea, where it was likely stored.

“ʻThe warming of the Southern Ocean may have shifted the winds as well as melted sea ice, and eventually drawn the CO2 out of the deep water, and released it into the atmosphere,ʼ Shakun said. ʻThat, in turn, would have amplified warming on a global scale.ʼ”

The study was a global review of the timing of temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide changes at the end of the last period of continental glaciation.


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