Marvelous Microfossils

De Wever's ode to the invisible world around us allows readers to peer directly into a minute microcosm with massive implications, even traversing eons to show us how life arose on Earth.

Training a powerful lens on the microscopic wonders of the universe, hundreds of photos, both exquisite and strange, accompany this startling exposé of a secret world invisibly evolving around us for billions of years. Silver Winner of the 2021 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Nature & Environment Microfossils—the most abundant, ancient, and easily accessible of Earth's fossils—are also the most important. Their ubiquity is such that every person on the planet touches or uses them every single day, and yet few of us even realize they exist. Despite being the sole witnesses of 3 billion years of evolutionary history, these diminutive fungi, plants, and animals are themselves invisible to the eye. In this microscopic bestiary, prominent geologist, paleontologist, and scholar Patrick De Wever lifts the veil on their mysterious world. Marvelous Microfossils lays out the basics of what microfossils are before moving on to the history, tools, and methods of investigating them. The author describes the applications of their study, both practical and sublime. Microfossils, he explains, are indispensable in age-dating and paleoenvironmental reconstruction, which guide enormous investments in the oil, gas, and mining industries. De Wever shares surprising stories of how microfossils made the Chunnel possible and have unmasked perpetrators in jewel heists and murder investigations. He also reveals that microfossils created the stunning white cliffs on the north coast of France, graced the tables of the Medici family, and represent our best hope for discovering life on the exoplanets at the outer edges of our solar system. Describing the many strange and beautiful groups of known microfossils in detail, De Wever combines lyrical prose with hundreds of arresting color images, from delicate nineteenth-century drawings of phytoplankton drafted by Ernst Haeckel, the "father of ecology," to cutting-edge scanning electron microscope photographs of billion-year-old acritarchs. De Wever's ode to the invisible world around us allows readers to peer directly into a minute microcosm with massive implications, even traversing eons to show us how life arose on Earth.

A vivid account of a major shift in how we understand Earth, from an exceptionally talented new voice. Earth is not simply an inanimate planet on which life evolved, but rather a planet that came to life. One of humanity’s oldest beliefs is that our world is alive. Though once ridiculed by some scientists, the idea of Earth as a vast interconnected living system has gained acceptance in recent decades. We, and all living things, are more than inhabitants of Earth—we are Earth, an outgrowth of its structure and an engine of its evolution. Life and its environment have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates its climate. Acclaimed science writer Ferris Jabr reveals a radical new vision of Earth where lush forests spew water, pollen, and bacteria to summon rain; giant animals engineer the very landscapes they roam; microbes chew rock to shape continents; and microscopic plankton, some as glittering as carved jewels, remake the air and sea. Humans are one of the most extreme examples of life transforming Earth. Through fossil fuel consumption, agriculture, and pollution, we have altered more layers of the planet in less time than any other species, pushing Earth into a crisis. But we are also uniquely able to understand and protect the planet’s wondrous ecology and self-stabilizing processes. Jabr introduces us to a diverse cast of fascinating people who have devoted themselves to this vital work. Becoming Earth is an exhilarating journey through the hidden workings of our planetary symphony—its players, its instruments, and the music of life that emerges—and an invitation to reexamine our place in it. How well we play our part will determine what kind of Earth our descendants inherit for millennia to come.

Microfossils through Time: An Introduction is the first textbook of micropaleontology addressing undergraduate students. It presents an introduction to each group of microfossils, from bacteria to microscopical debris of vertebrates, demonstrating the broad range of study of this subdiscipline of paleontology. Not only those groups of microscopic fossils, which are traditionally considered relevant to micropaleontology, are presented (e.g., dinoflagellates, charophytes, radiolarians, spores and pollen, ostracods, chitinozoans, etc), but also others that often occur in micropaleontological samples (e.g., bivalves, echinoderms, fish debris, mammalian teeth, etc). Each of the more than forty microfossil groups are presented in an order that follows the paleontological classification, with a history of study and a variety of data on morphology, living habitats, stratigraphical distribution and their evolution, as inferred from the fossil record. The text is intended as the starting point for a new generation of textbooks that presents micropaleontology in a new structure capable of assuring an efficient transfer of expertise to the younger generations of scientists. This book will help those making their first steps in micropaleontology to develop defensible models of what microfossils are, laying the foundations for fundamental and applied studies. It introduces micropaleontology as a tool for conducting applied studies in biostratigraphy, paleoecology and for paleobathymetric estimates, basin analysis and reconstructing geological history, or related to sequence stratigraphy. It also addresses students and specialists in biology and genetics, offering a solid data base to be integrated with the other two principal components of the triad of sciences that studies the evolution of life on Earth.

Microfossils is the definitive guide to all the major microfossil groups. In recent years a greater understanding of species' concepts and stratigraphical ranges, advances in the completeness of the microfossil record and the advent of molecular techniques in classification have led to major changes in the classification and applications of microfossils. This new edition of Microfossils has been restructured and rewritten to take into account these significant advances to provide a complete guide to taxonomy, phylogeny, ecology and palaeoecology of microfossils and their applications. This new.