A History Of Life

1. Moving one eye to the other side of the head
(Evolutionary innovations/Eocene)

An apparent evolutionary conondrum has been recently solved by the study of some Eocene fossils related to the flatfishes. Matt Friedman of the Chicago University, an expert of fish evolution, has

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

... 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 evolution that Darwin badly needed, Time. The difficulty with whic...

3. Strange Science
(Theory of evolution/Earth Science matters)

...gured out there used to be such things as dinosaurs? Curious about how scientists learned to reconstruct fossil skeletons? The knowledge we take for granted today was slow in coming, and along the ...

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

...Ian West is a 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 Sou...

5. From production to final burial - pt. 2
(Taphonomy/Shell transport)

...004). References Dominici S. 2001. Taphonomy and paleoecology of shallow marine macrofossil assemblages in a collisional setting (late Pliocene-early Pleistocene, Western Emilia, ...

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

...nbsp;     References Dominici S. & Zuschin M. 2005. Infidelities of fossil assemblage. Lethaia 38, 381-382. Hottinger L. & Schaub H. 1960. Divisiòn en ...

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

...type sea level cycles , lie several shell beds of different nature (Benvenuti et al 2007 ). Collectors of fossil marine molluscs were active here since the Renaissance and in the sixteenth century the...

8. Back to the Basin
(Paleontological sites/Paleogene Europe)

..., a few km north of Damery and some 20 km south of Reims, in the heart of the Champagne, not just for the fossils as you may guess. You can actually walk inside the strata for 200 m, along a laterally...

9. Lower Paleozoic exceptional biota
(Past ecosystems/Shoreface)

The journal Geology has recently published two reports on exceptionally well-preserved fossil biotas from marginal marine sediments, one of Silurian (von Bitter et al. 2007), the other of late Ordovic

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

...hole community (Tomlinson 1986). What about the past? When do you recognize something that you can call a fossil mangrove community? The mangrove plants, as presently understood, are ascertained in th...

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

...of ecosystem development for several intertidal and subtidal biofacies. Information on the most important fossil localities (unfortunately available only in italian) concerning their fossil content, i...

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

...nal stages at shelfal depths. With this respect, they do much the same as in bathyal environments. Fossils around the Orciano whale testify at least of two of the three successional stages tha...

13. Manifesto
(Static Content)

...lion years ago, cells doing their thing since 3.8 billion years, ready to accidentally become part of the fossil record. From this event on, the bread that was to feed generations of paleontologists h...

14. Past ecosystems
(Section List)

Ecosystems as understood from the fossil record