Phytoplankton recovery in the early Paleocene provided the food source to support large benthic foraminiferal assemblages, which are mainly detritus-feeding.

Ultimate recovery of the benthic populations occurred over several stages lasting several hundred thousand years into the early Paleocene.

However, the use of data from coral fossils to support K – Pg extinction and subsequent Paleocene recovery must be weighed against the changes that occurred in coral ecosystems through the K – T boundary.

Later, warm high-latitude climates returned to the Antarctic Peninsula region during the Paleocene and early Eocene as reflected in fossil plants.

Category: Paleocene plants

According to genetic studies, divergence of primates from other mammals began and the earliest fossils appear in the Paleocene, around.

The global climate during the Paleogene departed from the hot and humid conditions of the late Mesozoic era and began a cooling and drying trend which, although having been periodically disrupted by warm periods such as the Paleocene – Eocene Thermal Maximum, persists today.

The most extreme change in Earth surface conditions during the Cenozoic Era began just after the temporal boundary between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs around 55. 0 million years ago.

During the Paleocene Epoch ( about 55-65 million years ago ), a group of wolf-like artiodactyls related to Pakicetus began pursuing an amphibious lifestyle in rivers or shallow seas.

The San Joaquin Valley began to form about 65 million years ago during the early Paleocene era.

Convergent movements between the tectonic plates ( the Indian plate and the African plate from the south, the Eurasian plate from the north, and many smaller plates and microplates ) began already in the early Cretaceous, but the major phases of mountain building began in the Paleocene to Eocene.

With the decline and extinction of the kannemeyerids, there were to be no more dominant large synapsid herbivores until the middle Paleocene epoch ( 60 Ma ) when mammals, descendants of cynodonts, began to diversify after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Traditionally, the extinct family Viverravidae ( viverravids ) had been thought to be the earliest carnivorans, with fossil records first appearing in the Paleocene of North America about 60 mya, but recently described evidence from cranial morphology now places them outside the order Carnivora.

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.

However, during the early Paleocene, flora were relatively diverse with little predation from insects, even 1. 7 million years after the extinction event.

Frog species appear to have survived into the Paleocene with few species becoming extinct.

Climates during the Tertiary slowly cooled, starting off in the Paleocene with tropical-to-moderate worldwide temperatures and ending before the first extensive glaciation at the start of the Quaternary.

In the process, the core of the Alps, with the terranes that were subducted in the Paleocene and Eocene, still moves upward.

The ancestors of the sand dollars diverged from the other irregular echinoids, namely the cassiduloids, during the early Jurassic, with the first true sand dollar genus, Togocyamus, arising during the Paleocene.

The mammalian faunas of the Paleocene of central Utah, with notes on the geology.

Xyronomys is an extinct genus of small mammals from the Paleocene of North America, with one species described and a second species is awaiting publication.

This event, the Paleocene – Eocene Thermal Maximum ( PETM, alternatively ( ETM1 ), and formerly known as the " Initial Eocene " or "", ( IETM / LPTM )), was associated with rapid ( in geological terms ) global warming, profound changes in ecosystems, and major perturbations in the carbon cycle.

The majority of the coal mined in the Powder River Basin is part of the Fort Union Formation ( Paleocene ), with the low sulfur and ash content of the coal in the region making it very desirable.

Here, present climates allow, effectively, the maintenance of the old soils under climates which they could not actually form if one were to start with the parent material on which they developed in the Mesozoic and Paleocene.

They have also been widely discovered in the early Paleocene Bug Creek fauna, along with other leptictid.

These deposits were once thought to be latest Cretaceous, but it is now clear that they are Paleocene channels with time-averaged fossil assemblages.

The end of the Paleocene ( 55. 5 / 54. 8 Mya ) was marked by one of the most significant periods of global change during the Cenozoic, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which upset oceanic and atmospheric circulation and led to the extinction of numerous deep-sea benthic foraminifera and on land, a major turnover in mammals.

A species of fossil mammals from the Paleocene was named Earendil undomiel by Leigh Van Valen in 1978.

Starting from just a few kg before the event, maximum size had reached ~ 50 kg a few million years later, and ~ 750 kg by the end of the Paleocene.

During the Paleocene, because of the small initial size of all mammals, apex predator niches were often occupied by members of other classes, such as terrestrial crocodilians ( e. g. Pristichampsus ), large snakes ( e. g. Titanoboa ), varanid lizards, or flightless birds ( e. g. Gastornis in Europe and North America, Paleopsilopterus in South America ).

It indicates that the lineages leading to the two callichthyid subfamilies occurred at least by the late Paleocene.

During the Paleocene and Eocene, extensive forests of Metasequoia occurred as far north as Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island and sites on Axel Heiberg Island ( northern Canada ) at around 80 ° N latitude .< ref > Metasequoia was likely deciduous by this time.

Onset of magmatic sea-floor spreading was accompanied by volcanic eruptions of picrites and basalts in the Paleocene at the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay.

The available fossil record of Neogastropoda is relatively complete, and supports a widely accepted evolutionary scenario of an Early Cretaceous origin of the group followed by two rapid diversification rounds in the late Cretaceous and the Paleocene.

This is thought to have formed during Neogene to Quaternary weathering by the silicification of Upper Paleocene Lambeth Group sediments, resulting from acid leaching.

The San Rafael Swell, approximately by, consists of a giant dome-shaped anticline of sandstone, shale, and limestone that was pushed up during the Paleocene Laramide Orogeny 60-40 million years ago.

North of Namur the Cretaceous is overlain by younger Paleocene and Eocene deposits of the Landen Group.

The Moeraki Boulders are concretions created by the cementation of the Paleocene mudstone of the Moeraki Formation, from which they have been exhumed by coastal erosion.

The Family Lauraceae was part of Gondwanaland flora and many genera also, migrated to South America via Antarctica in ocean landbridges by Paleocene time.

Between approximately 80 and 60 Ma, i. e. in the Late Cretaceous and early Paleocene, North America and South America were perhaps connected, at least episodically, by a land bridge, due to the eastward motion of the Caribbean plate between the two continental masses.

Author Orville Prescott wrote, " Consider the case of Loren Eiseley, author of The Immense Journey, who can sit on a mountain slope beside a prairie-dog town and imagine himself back in the dawn of the Age of mammals eighty million years ago: ' There by a tree root I could almost make him out, that shabby little Paleocene rat, eternal tramp and world wanderer, father of all mankind.

One genus, Dissacus, successfully spread to Europe and North America by the early Paleocene.

Mesonychids in North America were by far the largest predatory mammals during the early Paleocene to middle Eocene.