Eocene Biodiversity: Unusual Occurrences and Rarely Sampled Habitats

ISBN-13: 9781461354710 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 442 str.

Gregg F. Gunnell

Opis

Initially, this work was designed to document and study the diversification of modern mammalian groups and was quite successful and satisfying. However, as field and laboratory work continued, there began to develop a suspicion that not all of the Eocene story was being told. It became apparent that most fossil samples, especially those from the American West, were derived from similar preservational circumstances and similar depositional settings. A program was initiated to look for other potential sources of fossil samples, either from non-traditional lithologies or from geographic areas that were not typically sampled. As this program of research grew it began to demonstrate that different lithologies and different geographic areas told different stories from those that had been developed based on more typical faunal assemblages.
This book is conceived as an introduction to non-traditional Eocene fossils samples, and as a place to document and discuss features of these fossil assemblages that are rare or that come from rarely represented habitats.

Recenzje

`The papers in this volume are of consistently high quality and each will be a valuable contribution to the field. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Ecocene specifically of the history of global biodiversity through geologic time.'
Quarterly Review of Biology, 77:4 (2002)

Spis treści

1. An updated review of the fish fauna from the Green River Formation, The World's most productive freshwater Lagerstätten; L. Grande. 2. Paleontological investigations at the Eocene locality of Mahenge in north-central Tanzania, East Africa; T. Harrison, et al. 3. Early Wasatchian mammals from the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mississippi: Biostratigraphic and paleobiogeographic implications; K.C. Beard, M.R. Dawson. 4. Paleocene-Eocene microvertebrates in freshwater limestone of the Willwood Formation, Clarks Fork Basin, Wyoming; J.I. Block, G.J. Bowen. 5. Unusual vertebrate microfaunas from the Willwood Formation, Early Eocene of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming; M.T. Silcox, K.D. Rose. 6. Stratigraphy and Taphonomy of Grizzly Buttes, Bridger Formation, Middle Eocene of Wyoming; J.P. Alexander, B.J. Burger. 7. Taphonomic Analysis of the Messel Formation (Germany); J.L. Franzen. Paleobiological Implications of the Messel mammalian assemblage; G. Storch. 9. The Eocene mammalian fauna of Chambi (Tunisia) in its geological context; J.-L. Hartenberger, et al. 10. Gandhera Quarry, A Unique Early Eocene Assemblage from Baluchistan, west-central Pakistan; P.D. Gingerich, et al. 11. Paleoecology and Biostratigraphy of marginal marine Gulf Coast Eocene vertebrate localities; J. Westgate. 12. Taphonomic Interpretation of Gnat-Out-Of-Hell, an Early Uintan small mammal locality in the Uinta Basin, Utah; M.L. Thornton, D.T. Rasmussen. 13. A mass death accumulation of Coryphodon anthracoideus (Mammalia: Pantodonta) at Roehler's Coryphodon Catastrophe Quarry (Lower Eocene,Wasatch Formation), Washakie Basin, Wyoming; E. McGee. 14. Meniscotherium mass-death assemblages; T.G. Williamson. 15. Taphonomy, fauna, and depositional environment of the Omomys Quarry, an unusual accumulation from the Bridger Formation (Middle Eocene) of southwestern Wyoming (USA); P.C. Murphey, et al. 16. Fossil vertebrates from basin margin assemblages, Green River Basin, Wyoming &endash; Speciation in the fossil record; G.F. Gunnell, W.S. Bartels.