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Fossil mollusks

 

 

Books about fossil mollusks

The Evolutionary Biology of the Bivalvia
Bivalves are the key components of Recent marine and freshwater ecosystems and have been so for most of the Phanerozoic. Their rich and long fossil record, combined with their abundance and diversity in modern seas, has made bivalves the ideal subject of palaeobiological and evolutionary studies. Despite this, however, topics such as early evolution of the class, relationships between various taxa and the life habits of some key extinct forms have remained remarkably clear.In the last few years there has been enormous expansion in the range of techniques available to both palaeontologists and zoologists and key discoveries of new faunas which shed new light on the evolutionary biology of this important class.This volume integrates palaeontological and zoological approaches and sheds new light on the course of the bivalve evolution. This series of 32 original papers tackles key issues including: up to date molecular phylogenies of major groups; new hard and soft morphological cladistic analyses; reassessments of the early Palaeozoic radiation; important new observations on form and functional morphology; analyses of biogeography and biodiversity; novel (palaeo)ecological studies.
Southern Hemisphere Palaeobiogeography of Triassic-Jurassic Marine Bivalves
 Palaeobiogeography is a complex subject which processes information provided by both Biology and Earth Sciences. It is conceptually and philosophically equivalent to neobiogeography. Nevertheless, its methods are somewhat different, since it is limited by the incompleteness of the fossil record. On the other hand, it has direct access to the time dimension, a key ingredient of organic evolution. Mesozoic benthonic mollusks, and especially bivalves, have a great potential for palaeobiogeographical analysis due to their commonly good preservation, abundance, diversity and high dispersion potential at the larval stage. From a merely descriptive point of view, the analysis of their distribution shows latitudinal gradients and distributional patterns, both at regional and global scales, which are the basis for the recognition of biochoremas or palaeobiogeographical units of different ranks. Moving forward towards a causal palaeobiogeography, these organisms also provide interesting insight into particular biogeographical questions, such as bipolarity and its origin. The evolution in time of the recognized biochoremas can be discussed in relation to palaeoclimas and extinction events. Finally, some of the results obtained from the analysis of the distribution of past bivalve biotas were even used to propose and discuss the development of marine corridors and argue about the distribution of continents in the past.