Fossil Fungi
Fossil Fungi

Author: Thomas N Taylor

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2014-08-14

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0123877547

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Fungi are ubiquitous in the world and responsible for driving the evolution and governing the sustainability of ecosystems now and in the past. Fossil Fungi is the first encyclopedic book devoted exclusively to fossil fungi and their activities through geologic time. The book begins with the historical context of research on fossil fungi (paleomycology), followed by how fungi are formed and studied as fossils, and their age. The next six chapters focus on the major lineages of fungi, arranging them in phylogenetic order and placing the fossils within a systematic framework. For each fossil the age and provenance are provided. Each chapter provides a detailed introduction to the living members of the group and a discussion of the fossils that are believed to belong in this group. The extensive bibliography (~ 2700 entries) includes papers on both extant and fossil fungi. Additional chapters include lichens, fungal spores, and the interactions of fungi with plants, animals, and the geosphere. The final chapter includes a discussion of fossil bacteria and other organisms that are fungal-like in appearance, and known from the fossil record. The book includes more than 475 illustrations, almost all in color, of fossil fungi, line drawings, and portraits of people, as well as a glossary of more than 700 mycological and paleontological terms that will be useful to both biologists and geoscientists. - First book devoted to the whole spectrum of the fossil record of fungi, ranging from Proterozoic fossils to the role of fungi in rock weathering - Detailed discussion of how fossil fungi are preserved and studied - Extensive bibliography with more than 2000 entries - Where possible, fungal fossils are placed in a modern systematic context - Each chapter within the systematic treatment of fungal lineages introduced with an easy-to-understand presentation of the main characters that define extant members - Extensive glossary of more than 700 entries that define both biological, geological, and mycological terminology

Paleobotany
Paleobotany

Author: Edith L. Taylor

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2009-01-21

Total Pages: 1253

ISBN-13: 008055783X

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This book provides up-to-date coverage of fossil plants from Precambrian life to flowering plants, including fungi and algae. It begins with a discussion of geologic time, how organisms are preserved in the rock record, and how organisms are studied and interpreted and takes the student through all the relevant uses and interpretations of fossil plants. With new chapters on additional flowering plant families, paleoecology and the structure of ancient plant communities, fossil plants as proxy records for paleoclimate, new methodologies used in phylogenetic reconstruction and the addition of new fossil plant discoveries since 1993, this book provides the most comprehensive account of the geologic history and evolution of microbes, algae, fungi, and plants through time. - Major revision of a 1993 classic reference - Lavishly illustrated with 1,800 images and user friendly for use by paleobotanists, biologists, geologists and other related scientists - Includes an expanded glossary with an extensive up-to-date bibliography and a comprehensive index - Provides extensive coverage of fungi and other microbes, and major groups of land plants both living and extinct

Paleobotany and the Evolution of Plants
Paleobotany and the Evolution of Plants

Author: Wilson N. Stewart

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-02-26

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 9780521382946

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This 1993 textbook describes and explains the origin and evolution of plants as revealed by the fossil record.

Evolutionary Paleobiology of Behavior and Coevolution
Evolutionary Paleobiology of Behavior and Coevolution

Author: A.J. Boucot

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 750

ISBN-13: 1483290816

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This book is the culmination of many years of research by a scientist renowned for his work in this field. It contains a compilation of the data dealing with the known stratigraphic ranges of varied behaviors, chiefly animal with a few plant and fungal, and coevolved relations. A significant part of the data consists of ``frozen behavior'', i.e. those in which an organism has been preserved while actually ``doing'' something, as contrasted with the interpretations of behavior of an organism deduced from functional morphology, important as the latter may be. The conclusions drawn from this compilation suggest that both behaviors and coevolved relations appear infrequently, following which there is relative fixity of the relation, i.e., two rates of evolution, very rapid and essentially zero. This conclusion complies well with the author's prior conclusion that community evolution followed the same rate pattern. In fact, communities are regarded here, as in large part, expressions of both behavior and coevolved relations, rather than as random aggregates controlled almost wholly by varied, unrelated physical parameters tracked by organisms, i.e., the concept that communities have no biologic reality, being merely statistical abstractions. The book is illustrated throughout with more than 400 photographs and drawings. It will be of interest to ethologists, evolutionists, parasitologists, paleontologists, and palaeobiologists at research and post-graduate levels.