A History Of Life

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

...biologists need, in order to figure out the complexities of metabolical ways involved in energy transfer and ecosystem functioning. The qualities of this guide, a must for a nicely-stuffed bookshelf o...

2. What's a mangrove?
(Past ecosystems/Mangrove forest)

...wood can be hardly recognized in ancient peat deposits (Plaziat 1995). Such fossils suggest that the modern ecosystem arose at the turn of the early Eocene, during the warmest times and the largest t...

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

...ersity, as around Orciano itself, others with brackish water faunas, making up a rather continuous record of ecosystem development for several intertidal and subtidal biofacies. Information on the mos...

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

Finally some evidence on the sulphophilic stage of whale-fall communities at relatively shallow depths. The ecosystem that develops around a carcass of a large cetacean undergoes four successional sta

5. What not to do with a beached whale
(Past ecosystems/Whale-fall communities)

...the benefit of shallow marine necton, benthos and bacteria and of inland scientists interested in whale-fall ecosystems. If you don't know it already, please consider the linked video reporting a ...

6. 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

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

The recovery of a varied benthic assemblage associated with a Pliocene balaenid at Orciano Pisano, in Tuscany, shows how shelfal fishes and invertebrates may gather around a whale-carcass following

8. Whale-fall communities on the shelf
(Past ecosystems/Whale-fall communities)

...whale bones and a variety of other invertebrates relying on chemiosymbiotic bacteria for food, shed light on ecosystems based on highly localized, ephemeral sources of food in a vast plain of small or...

9. Past ecosystems
(Section List)

Ecosystems as understood from the fossil record