Biogeography and Ecology of New Guinea

Biogeography and Ecology of New Guinea

Author: J.L. Gressit

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 962

ISBN-13: 9400986327

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J. L. Gressitt New Guinea is a fantastic island, unique and fascinating. It is an area of incredible variety of geomorphology, biota, peoples, languages, history, tradi tions and cultures. Diversity is its prime characteristic, whatever the subject of interest. To a biogeographer it is tantalizing, as well as confusing or frustrating when trying to determine the history of its biota. To an ecologist, and to all biologists, it is a happy hunting ground of endless surprises and unanswered questions. To a conservationist it is like a dream come true, a "flash-back" of a few centuries, as well as a challenge for the future. New Guinea is so special that it is hard to compare it with other islands or tropical areas. It is something apart, with its very complicated history (chapters I: 2-4, II: 1-4, III: I, VI: I, 2). It is partly old but to a great extent very young, yet extremely rich and complex. It has biota of different sources - to such a degree that it is still disputed in this volume as to what Realm it belongs to: the Paleotropical or Notogaean (Australian); or what Region: Oriental, "Oceanic," Papuan or Australian. The terms Papuasian, Indo-Australian and Australasian also have been applied to the area.


Talepakemalai

Talepakemalai

Author: Brian S Bauer

Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 1950446239

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The Lapita Cultural Complex--first uncovered in the mid-20th century as a widespread archaeological complex spanning both Melanesia and Western Polynesia--has subsequently become recognized as of fundamental importance to Oceanic prehistory. Notable for its highly distinctive, elaborate, dentate-stamped pottery, Lapita sites date to between 3500-2700 BP, spanning the geographic range from the Bismarck Archipelago to Tonga and Samoa. The Lapita culture has been interpreted as the archaeological manifestation of a diaspora of Austronesian-speaking people (specifically of Proto-Oceanic language) who rapidly expanded from Near Oceania (the New Guinea-Bismarcks region) into Remote Oceania, where no humans had previously ventured. Lapita is thus a foundational culture throughout much of the southwestern Pacific, ancestral to much of the later, ethnographically-attested cultural diversity of the region.


Landmarks in Foraminiferal Micropalaeontology

Landmarks in Foraminiferal Micropalaeontology

Author: A.J. Bowden

Publisher: Geological Society of London

Published: 2013-12-19

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9781862393714

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TMS Special Publication 6. This TMS Special Publication comprises a collection of 23 papers with an international authorship reflecting on landmarks in the history and development of Foraminiferal micropalaeontology. The volume is prefaced by an introductory overview that provides a brief and selected historical setting, as well as the intended aims of the book. Selected developments in Foraminiferal studies from a global perspective are presented from the time of Alcide d'Orbigny and the founding of the Paris MNHN collections in the mid-nineteenth century to the use of foraminifera in industry, other museum collections, palaeoceanography and environmental studies, regional studies from the Southern Hemisphere and the rise and fall of significant research schools. The book concludes with a chapter on the modelling of foraminifera. Landmarks in Foraminiferal Micropalaeontology: History and Development will be of particular interest to micropalaeontologists, other Earth scientists, historians of science, museum curators and the general reader with an interest in science.