Despite what their names might suggest, ecology and palaeoecology have progressed historically as well separated disciplines. This unfortunate disjunction is analyzed here from a theoretical point of view. Among the factors that have facilitated the separation are: 1) the past-present dissociation characteristic of the human mind, 2) the diversity of fields of provenance of palaeoecologists, 3)...

HILE COMPLEXITY IS MOVING into every corner of the physical, chemical, and biological sciences, simplicity, elegance, and economy provide the bedrock criteria for choosing among competing hypotheses. Complexity can be viewed as a branch of mathematics. Simplicity can be viewed as a branch of philosophy or aesthetics. Richard Feynman said, “You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. ....

Earth's history has been witness to recurrently alternating phases of catastrophic evolution and dominant tectonic deformations, contractions and extension of rifting and spreading leading to quasi-cyclic changes in sedimentary environment and various earth processes. Recent studies have shown quasi-periodicities of 32 2 Million years (Myr) in various endogenic (geomagnetic reversals, magmatic ...

Scientific interest in debris-covered glaciers (DCGs) significantly increased during the last two decades, primarily from an abiotic perspective, but also regarding their distinctive ecology. An increasing body of evidence shows that, given a minimum debris thickness and sufficient substrate stability, DCGs host surprisingly diverse plant assemblages, both floristically structurally, despite be...

Actualism is a fundamental assumption of secular natural history. It replaced the Christian view of causality through providence, and it asserted an absolute physicochemical and geological continuity. Though often confused with uniformity and uniformitarianism due to secular obfuscation, actualism, at root, is a method of geology that limits historical processes and events to observed present-d...

The chemical and isotopic compositions of oceanic biogenic and authigenic minerals contain invaluable information on the evolution of seawater, hence on the history of interaction between tectonics, climate, ocean circulation, and the evolution of life. Important advances and greater understanding of (a) key minor and trace element cycles with various residence times, (b) isotopic sources and s...

We describe volcanic inverted relief sites around the world, making a comparative analysis of those most significant found from literature and our own search on imagery global topographic maps. Over fifty areas were found. The is based geoscience values defined by main geological landscape elements that define relief. This subjective open can be verified extended if other emerge, thus forming b...