This flora of 70 species is dominated by deciduous trees, many with descendants in China. Precipitation was 890 mm, mean annual temperature 12.5°C, the annual range 10°C, and freezing rare. Elevation was about 1000 meters. Comparison with the Horse Prairie flora, 30 miles east and across the present continental divide, indicates that the divide was then low and discontinuous, with warmer climate to the east.
This is a study of the Miocene Carmel flora of California, an evergreen laurel–oak forest that grew in a mild temperate (mean annual temperature of 15 degrees C), frost-free climate, with annual precipitation of about 760 mm (30 in.). Collectively, the Carmel and other Miocene floras like the San Pablo and Temblor (broad-leafed deciduous trees, with few evergreen species), the Puente (evergreen oak forest with chaparral species), the Mint Canyon, Ricardo, and Tehachapi (numerous arid subtropical scrub associated with oak woodland and chaparral species) suggest they foreshadowed a similar distribution of the different California vegetation zones today.
Volume 66 of Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry is based on a two day short course entitled Paleoaltimetry: Geochemical and Thermodynamic Approaches held prior to the Geological Society of American annual meeting in Denver, Colorado (October 26-27, 2007). This meeting and volume were sponsored by the Geochemical Society, Mineralogical Society of America, and the United States Department of Energy. Contents: The Significance of Paleotopography Stable Isotope-Based Paleoaltimetry: Theory and Validation Paleoelevation Reconstruction Using Pedogenic Carbonates Stable Isotope Paleoaltimetry in Orogenic Belts – The Silicate Record in Surface and Crustal Geological Archives Paleoaltimetry from Stable Isotope Compositions of Fossils A Review of Paleotemperature–Lapse Rate Methods for Estimating Paleoelevation from Fossil Floras Paleoaltimetry: A Review of Thermodynamic Methods Paleoelevation Measurement on the Basis of Vesicular Basalts Stomatal Frequency Change Over Altitudinal Gradients: Prospects for Paleoaltimetry Thermochronologic Approaches to Paleotopography Terrestrial Cosmogenic Nuclides as Paleoaltimetric Proxies
The author describes forty-two fossil taxa recovered during a study of the San Timoteo Badlands that used magnetobiostratigraphy to develop a temporal framework for addressing the tectonic evolution of southern California over the last 6 million years. For the Pliocene, small mammals are an effective means of correlating a magnetostratigraphy to the Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale when radioisotopic dates are unobtainable.
The Florissant formation's fossil beds and petrified forest are interesting in themselves but also shed light on questions of paleoecology, macroevolution, and taphonomy (the study of the process of fossilization). Meyer (National Park Service. Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado) and Smith (U. of Colorado Museum of Natural History--Paleontology/geological sciences, UC, Boulder) introduce 11 papers examining Florissant fossil flora, fauna, mineralogy and geochemistry through different periods and via a model of the role of microbial mats in its preservation. An integrated database/Web site to further related research is also discussed. The monograph is well-illustrated with geologic maps and images of historical figures in the field and specimens, but is not indexed.
With more than 500 species distributed all around the Northern Hemisphere, the genus Quercus L. is a dominant element of a wide variety of habitats including temperate, tropical, subtropical and mediterranean forests and woodlands. As the fossil record reflects, oaks were usual from the Oligocene onwards, showing the high ability of the genus to colonize new and different habitats. Such diversity and ecological amplitude makes genus Quercus an excellent framework for comparative ecophysiological studies, allowing the analysis of many mechanisms that are found in different oaks at different level (leaf or stem). The combination of several morphological and physiological attributes defines the existence of different functional types within the genus, which are characteristic of specific phytoclimates. From a landscape perspective, oak forests and woodlands are threatened by many factors that can compromise their future: a limited regeneration, massive decline processes, mostly triggered by adverse climatic events or the competence with other broad-leaved trees and conifer species. The knowledge of all these facts can allow for a better management of the oak forests in the future.
This work represents an exhaustive review of one of the most important late Cenozoic radiations of Australian marsupials: the short-faced, or sthenurine kangaroos. Sthenurines originated in the Miocene, diversified in the Pliocene, and radiated in the Quaternary to become one of Australia's most conspicuous mammal groups, the only lineage of browsing marsupials comparable in diversity to the browsing artiodactyl guilds of other continents. The culmination of 12 years' research, the monograph details the taxonomy of the sthenurines, redescribing each of the six genera (two new) and 26 species (four new), and is amply illustrated with line drawings and more than 100 pages of plates. It presents the first cladistic analysis of sthenurines, and by synthesizing systematic, functional morphological, biochronologic and zoogeographic data, considers the major directions of adaptive change within the group, and the major environmental factors that drove their evolution. It is one of the most comprehensive studies of an extinct marsupial lineage ever made, and should be an essential reference for students of Australian late Cenozoic vertebrates, marsupial evolution, environmental change and Pleistocene extinctions.
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
