Frederick J. Fago

TL;DR: Oleanane has been reported in Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary source rocks and their related oils and has been suggested as a marker for flowering plants as discussed by the authors, suggesting that a separate lineage leads to the angiosperms well before the Early Cretaged or that other plant groups have the rarely expressed ability to synthesize oleanane precursors.

TL;DR: In this paper, two new rearranged hopanoid hydrocarbons have been isolated from a Prudhoe Bay crude, Alaska, using X-ray crystallography, and the structures of these hopanes are consistent with an origin by catalytic rearrangement from hopenes during early diagenesis.

TL;DR: In this paper, an analysis of a C 30 -sterane from Prudhoe Bay oil indicates that these steranes are 24- n -propylcholestanes that apparently are derived from precursor sterols 24 - n-propylidene-cholesterols and 24 -n-n−cholesterol, and therefore their source algae evolved between Early Ordovician and Devonian.

TL;DR: The molecular record of C25 HBI chemical fossils in a large suite of well-dated marine sediments and petroleum revealed that the older cluster, composed of rhizosolenid diatoms, evolved 91.5 ± 1.5 million years ago, enabling an accurate dating of the pace of diatom evolution that is unprecedented.

TL;DR: In this paper, a suite of 40 oils and extracts of purported source rocks from the Tarim basin in NW China were studied and compared with Ordovician and Cambrian source rocks.