You can download Biominerals and Fossils Through Time ebook here.
- Title: Biominerals and Fossils Through Time
- Author: Jean-Pierre Cuif, Yannicke Dauphin, James E. Sorauf
- Publisher: Cambridge
- Pages: 503
Fossils are essential to the reconstruction of the evolution of life and episodes in Earth history. Fossil skeletal material serves as the repository of chemical data widely used in the reconstruction of the Earth’s climate–ocean system at various time scales. Knowledge of biomineralization – the processes associated with the formation of mineralized biological structures – is essential to properly evaluate data derived from fossils. Additionally, knowledge of biomineralization is critical to the understanding of major events in the evolution of faunas, such as the original appearance of skeletons and some major extinction events.
This is the first book to concentrate on aspects of biomineralization through Earth history. The book emphasizes skeletal formation and fossilization in a geologic frame work in order to understand evolution, relationships between fossil groups, and the use of biomineral materials as geochemical proxies for understanding ancient oceans and climates. Approaching the subject from this viewpoint allows the authors to link the biotic, physical, and chemical realms.
The focus is on shells and skeletons of calcareous organisms, although the broader impacts of these processes on other elements are also addressed, especially their roles in the global chemical cycles of carbon and silicon. The book explores the fine structures and mode of growth of the characteristic crystalline units, taking advantage of the most recent physical methodological advances. It is richly illustrated and will be of great interest to advanced students and researchers in paleontology, Earth history, evolution, sedimentary geology, geochemistry, and materials science.
Therefore, most of this book is dedicated to an in-depth examination of the structural and chemical properties of the crystal-like units which are found forming shells and other calcareous skeletons. Morphological diversity of shells is familiar to everyone and is still emphasized by the very precise species-specific three-dimensional arrangements of their skeletal components, described at the microscopic level since the middle of the nineteenth century.