Ichnotaxonomy of Paleogene and Neogene tetrapod tracks

Abstract

The Cenozoic (66 MaePresent) was a time when a series of major mountain-building episodesoccurred, such as Himalayas, Zagros, Alps, and Pyrenees, and is also when the Earth’sclimate changed in several steps from ice-free poles and warm conditions to ice-covered polesand cold conditions (e.g., François and Goddéris, 1998; Mudelsee et al., 2014).Late Campanian to early Danian trends in climate changes show a global weathering andindicate a long-term trend toward a more humid climate which also culminated during the KTtransition. For the same interval, middle and high southern latitude oxygen isotope recordsindicate long-term climate cooling. This suggests that during the Maastrichtian humidityincreased in low latitudes whereas high latitudes cooled (Adatte et al., 2002). The shorttermwarming just below the K-T boundary may be linked to Deccan volcanism (Caldeiraand Rampino 1990; Barnet et al., 2018) or by the Chicxulub asteroid impact at theCretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary (Vellekoop et al., 2018). Cenozoic climatic oscillationsare considerable, for instance, during the PaleoceneeEocene there was a warming trend(PaleoceneeEocene Thermal Maximum, PETM), in the EoceneeOligocene the tendencywas to be cooling (EoceneeOligocene Transition), and there was another change to warmingin the MioceneePliocene (Middle Miocene Climate Optimum) (see Mudelsee et al., 2014 andreferences therein).