The role of fossils in dating the tree of life has been misunderstood. Fossils can provide good ‘‘minimum’’ age estimates for branches in the tree, but ‘‘maximum’’ constraints on those ages are poorer. Current debates about which are the ‘‘best’’ fossil dates for calibration move to consideration of the most appropriate constraints on the ages of tree nodes. Because fossilbased dates are constr...

Few discoveries in geology are more important than geological time. However, for most people it is impossible to grasp because of its massive scale. In this chapter we offer a solution to this problem based on our research in cognition and education. Our strategy involves the decoupling of geological time between the macro-scale of "deep time which includes the major features of earth history, ...

Three new species of bibionid flies are described from the late Oligocene deposit of Bes-Konak, Anatolia, Turkey: Bibio anatolicus sp.n., Bibio nigricosta sp.n. and Penthetria beskonakensis sp.n. These genera are associated with temperate climate, contrasting with the bibionid Oligocene fossils from some other European localities with warmer climates, where the intertropical genus Plecia often ...

[1] Significantly older C ages by 2500–7900 years are found for sedimentary total organic carbon (TOC) when compared to ages of codeposited surface-dwelling foraminifera in the southern Okinawa Trough. This age discrepancy increases with rising sea level since the Last Glacial Maximum. A progressive shift in TOC dC toward more negative values with rising sea level reflects an increasing fractio...

Concerns about sustainability of fossil fuels and global warming, along with energy security, have provided a strong incentive in recent times towards research and development of carbon neutral alternatives including biofuels and biochemicals. This necessitates the development of efficient “biocatalysts” which can access wide range of products currently derived from petroleum. Current work deal...

globally excessive consumption of hydrocarbon fuel in transport sector is a serious threat to the civilization due to paucity of fuel in future. also this growing use of vehicles for transport is contributing about 70% of total air pollution and causing environmental and ecological imbalances. thus the worldwide fast depletion of conventional energy resources and impact of emissions on environm...

1 Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, 413 19 Gothenburg, Sweden 2 Department of Computational Biology, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland 3 Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Center, Gothenburg, Sweden 4 CONICET, Centro Nacional Patagonico, Boulevard Almirante Brown 2915, 9120 Puerto Madryn, Chubut, Argentina. 5 Facultad de Ciencias Natural...

When fossil diatoms are preserved in mires, they can be excellent indicators of ecological conditions and very useful in palaeoenviromental reconstruction, both alone and in combination with other siliceous fossils. Processing techniques for diatom frustules have varied and been modified according to the sediment from which the diatoms are being extracted. They differ from those used for palyno...