A History Of Life

1. Ichthyosaur turbidites
(Taphonomy/Vertebrate Transport & Burial)

...way to the last burial place, during the Norian it was ichthyosaurs, eusauropterygians and thalattosaurs around. And today much more fun to discover. Check it all out in the new Palaios paper, ...

2. The forgotten ingredient
(Theory of evolution/Earth Science matters)

...to use them, the finiteness of a man’s life and an incapacity to use anything but it to measure the world around us. The instruments we are dealing with are rocks and fossils and the factor of evoluti...

3. Kimmeridge Clays and the Sea of Britain
(Paleontological sites/Jurassic Europe)

... smiling person and a Jurassic enthusiast with the words and the skills to capture rock and fossil lovers around the world. His website has wonderful pictures on the geology of the South Central Eng...

4. From production to final burial
(Taphonomy/Shell transport)

...raction carpets within the sandstones. Nummulites traction carpets are present also in younger sandstones around the village of Santa Liestra, in the Esera valley (and Cuisian proposed parastratoype: ...

5. San Miniato and the history of Earth Science
(Paleontological sites/Neogene Europe)

The hills around San Miniato, Pisa District in Tuscany, are a paleontological heritage. Within an alluvial to open shelf, cyclothemic succession, a testimonial of early late Pliocene Milankovitch-ty

6. Life in a sulphuretum
(Past ecosystems/Microbial communities)

...de oxidizing bacteria in sulphureta (Dyer 2003 - see preceding post). One such places is the mudflat belt around the Isonzo river outlets, in the northernmost Adriatic (Italy). Phanerogam meadows prov...

7. Methane, flatulence, and the coevolution of bacteria
(Past ecosystems/Microbial communities)

...ears that one spouse can “give” methanogens to another. But is this due to similar diets, or to a passing around of actual bacteria and a genetic tendency to harbor them? A genetic influence is sugges...

8. From seagrass to mangrove, and back
(Past ecosystems/Mangrove forest)

...racted over 200 researchers, resource managers, educators, and students from 25 nations and was organized around the themes of nursery and trophic function; community ecology and connectivity; mangrov...

9. Paleontological sites of the Pisa Province (Italy)
(Paleontological sites/Neogene Europe)

.... The Pisa territory is however rich with all kinds of marine shell beds, some of them high diversity, as around Orciano itself, others with brackish water faunas, making up a rather continuous record...

10. Sperm whales carcasses at the shelf break
(Past ecosystems/Whale-fall communities)

...he sulphophilic stage of whale-fall communities at relatively shallow depths. The ecosystem that develops around a carcass of a large cetacean undergoes four successional stages that allow nectic, ben...

11. New species of sea anemone at 3000 m
(Past ecosystems/Whale-fall communities)

A new anemone species has been found on whale bones lying on a deep-water bottom, around 3000 m in the Monterey Canyon, Pacific Ocean. The name chosen by Meg Daly and Luciana Gusmao, the specialists

12. Whale-fall bivalves
(Past ecosystems/Whale-fall communities)

... a Pliocene balaenid at Orciano Pisano, in Tuscany, shows how shelfal fishes and invertebrates may gather around a whale-carcass following successional stages at shelfal depths. With this respect, the...