Book Description

Paleobiology is arguably the next frontier in micropaleontology, and no one group may have more impact on the global environment with a more enigmatic life history than the tiny coccolithophores, whose countless calcitic skeletons are a considerable percentage of oceanic biomass, with a major role in the Earth's carbon cycle. The isolated fragments or "coccoliths" that make up vast carbonate deposits are no longer to be considered as merely sedimentary particles but as the invaluable record of once living organisms that have an important story to tell in terms of evolutionary biology. It is in this perspective that Coccolithophores: Cenozoic Discoasterales-Biology, Taxonomy, Stratigraphy presents a century of research on a recently extinct group whose species consistently represented over half of the coccolithophore communities in low latitudes. Their distinctive morphologies and structures, described and abundantly illustrated in this volume, render them ideal for biological and phylogenetic reconstruction as well as tentative physiological interpretations. The application to biostratigraphy, biochronology and chronostratigraphy of the several hundred species in the order is also reviewed and complemented by an appendix (https://www.sepm.org/supplemental-materials) of four catalogues with genera and species organized according to comprehensive keys of determination. While the book is designed to inform biologists and earth scientists interested in plankton evolutionary history, the appendix will assist students and professionals alike in academia and industry with the taxonomy of the order and the dating of marine sedimentary successions in which they occur.