Deep Time

by Erwin, Douglas H.; Wing, Scott L.

• ISBN13: 9780967755427
• ISBN10: 0967755425
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Paleontological Society

Summary

The fifteen chapters ofDeep Time, authored by leading researchers in paleobiology, present an overview of current work and an outline of important unsolved problems in the field, revealing exciting interactions between the study of fossils and recent findings in biogeochemistry, genetics, developmental and functional biology, ecology, evolution, systematics, and sedimentary geology. Within the diversity of this research lie the unifying themes that are central to the discipline--the idea that the histories and past behaviors of living systems are key to understanding their workings, and that "deep time" is a perspective paleobiology alone brings to the study of living things. Collectively, these pieces are a impressive demonstration of the accelerating strength of paleobiology as a science, and function as an invaluable overview of a field that documents not only the history of biological systems, but also uses that history to reveal the processes that allow living systems to respond to change.

Author Biography

Douglas H. Erwin and Scott L. Wing are both research curators in the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Palebiology.

Table of Contents

Preface	v
Directionality in the history of life: diffusion from the left wall or repeated scaling of the right?	1	(14)
Andrew H. Knoll
Richard K. Bambach
Micro- and macroevolution: scale and hierarchy in evolutionary biology and paleobiology	15	(38)
David Jablonski
Conversations about Phanerozoic global diversity	53	(21)
Arnold I. Miller
Origination and extinction components of taxonomic diversity: general problems	74	(29)
Mike Foote
Taphonomy and paleobiology	103	(45)
Anna K. Behrensmeyer
Susan M. Kidwell
Robert A. Gastaldo
The quality of the fossil record: a sequence stratigraphic perspective	148	(21)
Steven M. Holland
The biomolecular paleontology of continental fossils	169	(25)
Derek E. G. Briggs
Richard P. Evershed
Matthew J. Lockheart
Responses of plant populations and communities to environmental changes of the late Quaternary	194	(27)
Stephen T. Jackson
Jonathan T. Overpeck
Life in the last few million years	221	(15)
Jeremy B. C. Jackson
Kenneth G. Johnson
Pelagic species diversity, biogeography, and evolution	236	(23)
Richard D. Norris
Global climate change and North American mammalian evolution	259	(30)
John Alroy
Paul L. Koch
James C. Zachos
Modeling fossil plant form-function relationships: a critique	289	(16)
Karl J. Niklas
Invention by evolution: functional analysis in paleobiology	305	(19)
Roy E. Plotnick
Tomasz K. Baumiller
Fossils, genes, and the origin of novelty	324	(17)
Neil H. Shubin
Charles R. Marshall
Phylogenetic analyses and the fossil record: tests and inferences, hypotheses and models	341
Peter J. Wagner