A History Of Life

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

...ss, inheritance, frequency within populations. They often forget to explain, however, or altogether do not mention, an ingredient without which there is no ‘origin of species by natural selection’. Th...

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

... she started posting old pictures from books a couple of years ago and the site took off'. Not much more to say, but a suggestion to go there and dwell into a marvelous history. ...

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

... links don't work, though, and the buttons overcrowd a bit this iper-ipertext. And then one wishes not to see his name written so many times and his smiling face peeping around every corner. One l...

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

The Padan foredeep and satellite basins in Northwestern extensions of the Adriatic Sea are another place to study the outcomes of shell transport. Successions are much younger here and the best shel

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

...             These Alveolina beds cannot be directly tracked to basin settings, but shelfal sandstone lobes of the Figols, Castigaleu ...

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

...seen back in the days is no longer visible, due to intense cropping and natural wood cover. There seem not to be much awareness for the maintenance of geological heritage from the national authorities...

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

...ria by Betsey Dexter Dyer features a mine of gold for evolutionary thinking. Easily readable, it does not require the chemical and biological background needed to approach many other textbook on prok...

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

...s and the largest transgressions of the Cenozoic, a fact confirmed by the record of animal associates, notably the mollusks (Ellison et al. 1999). However, the strict actualistic approach applied to m...

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

Neogene deposits of Tuscany are noteworthy for several reasons. The first is that the succession is thick (up to 2000 m) and rather continuous, covering the Messinian-Pliestocene interval with mostl

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

...f you don't know it already, please consider the linked video reporting a blasting example of what not to do. As with what to do, a wonderful report is illustrated in a forthcoming article (Sperm ...

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

...d Provanna, are deep-water, bathyal forms, exclusive to organic-rich sites. The question is whether or not there are similar shelfal benthic specialists adapted to exploit resources associated with wh...

12. Manifesto
(Static Content)

...ositively known to be blessed with life. One lifetime - counting years from the birth of web 2.0 - may not be enough to get to know a single extraterrestrial organism, yet the complexities of life in ...