Microfossils are an abundant component of the sedimentary rock record. Their analysis can reveal not only the environments in which the rocks were deposited, but also their age. When combined, the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of microfossils offer enormous utility for archaeological and forensic investigations. Their presence can act as a geological ‘fingerprint’ and the tiniest fragment of material, such as a broken Iron Age potsherd, can contain a microfossil signature that reveals the geographical source of the materials under investigation. This book explores how microfossils are employed as tools to interpret human society and habitation throughout history. Examples include microfossil evidence associated with Palaeolithic human occupation at Boxgrove in Sussex, alongside investigations into human-induced landscape change during the Holocene. Further examples include the use of microfossils to provenance the source materials of Iron Age ceramics, Roman mosaics and Minoan pottery, in addition to their application to help solve modern murder cases, highlighting the diverse applications of microfossils to improving our understanding of human history.

This volume provides an overview of current research on fossil and modern dinoflagellates, as well as highlighting research areas for future collaboration, following the DINO9 International Conference in Liverpool. The volume is organized into four themes, with a review paper for each theme written by the key-note speaker. Each theme also includes a future research foci note following discussion during the conference. The contributions are organized into the following sections: environmental change, ecology/palaeoecology, life cycles and diversity, and stratigraphy and evolution. Also included are notes from two workshops: culture experiments and dinocysts as palaeoceanographic tracers. This volume will be of interest to both the biological and Micropalaeontological communities.

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’Orbignyand 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 riseand 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.

Dennis Curry was a remarkable polymath and philanthropist, leading a double-life as one of the UK's most gifted amateur geologists, whilst at the same time being an extremely successful businessman (as Managing Director of Currys Ltd). This Festschrift, authored by friends and specialists from Britain and France, pays tribute to his often seminal research as well as exhibiting the wide range of his geological interest. It contains 12 chapters and covers several differing aspects of micropalaeontology (pteropods, diatoms and especially foraminifera), Strontium Isotope Stratigraphy, Hampshire Basin stratigraphy and palaeogeography, as well as major contributions on English Channel sedimentology and the great faunal turnover affecting mammals at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. A scientific appreciation of Dennis Curry, ‘the professional amateur’, with recollections of former colleagues at University College, London (where he was Visiting Professor), together with an assessment of the valuable collections he established and donated to The Natural History Museum, are also included. Copiously illustrated, this book is a must for all geologists.

This book charts the stratigraphical distribution of ostracods in the Cambrian to Pleistocene deposits of Britain and outlines their utility for dating and correlating rock sequences, as well as indicating aspects of their palaeoenvironmental and palaeogeographical significance. These small bivalved crustaceans are the most abundant arthropods in the fossil record. Indeed, the stratigraphy of Britain, which embraces many type-sequences, provides a particularly rich and full record of them, from at least the basal Ordovician, and from the British Cambrian there is a biostratigraphy based on their ‘relatives’, the bradoriids and phosphatocopids. Ostracod distributions demonstrate the ecological success story of the group, occupying as they do marine, non-marine and even ‘terrestrial’ habitats. Written by current specialists in the field, this book is an authoritative account and will be welcomed by all micropalaeontologists and applied geologists in the industrial and academic world alike. It is richly illustrated with over 80 plates of electron micrographs and specially drawn maps, diagrams and range-charts.

This book unites climate modelling, palaeoceanography and palaeontology to address fundamental events in the climate history of Earth over the past 600 million years. Understanding the ‘tipping points’ that have led to rapid changes in the Earth's climate is vitally important with the realization that humans modify global climate. In an effort to better understand past and future climate change, general circulation models have become the forerunners of attempts to simulate future climate. Although extraordinarily sophisticated, they remain imperfect tools that require ‘grounding’ in geological data. In this, the study of past major climate transitions like the Palaeozoic icehouse worlds and the extreme greenhouse of the Cretaceous are invaluable. Both the mechanisms that forced changes in the Earth's climate as well as the proxies that track these changes are discussed. The central message of the book is that general circulation models tested with geological data in an iterative ‘ground truth’ process provide the best estimates of the Earth's ancient climate.

In recent years the application of biostratigraphy to hydrocarbon exploration and development has become increasingly important both scientifically and economically. The demand for higher stratigraphical resolution in field development studies has resulted in the utilization of new approaches. However, in under-explored areas with little reliable primary biostratigraphical data, conventional methods using relatively coarse biozonations still have relevance. The aim of this volume is to encourage an exchange of ideas and to seed new research initiatives particularly within integrated multidisciplinary teams. The papers are divided into four main themes which cover a broad range of modern applications of biostratigraphy. The first three themes are: UK North Sea field development; outcrop analogues; and international exploration and development. The final section discusses new methodologies, such as the application of correspondence analysis and multivariate correlation of wells, and palynological processing techniques applicable to the wellsite.