Being the only place in the northern North Atlantic yielding late Cainozoic terrestrial sediments rich in plant fossils, Iceland provides a unique archive for vegetation and climate development in this region. This book includes the complete plant fossil record from Iceland spanning the past 15 million years. Eleven sedimentary rock formations containing over 320 plant taxa are described. For each flora, palaeoecology and floristic affinities within the Northern Hemisphere are established. The exceptional fossil record allows a deeper understanding of the role of the “North Atlantic Land Bridge” for intercontinental plant migration and of the Gulf Stream-North Atlantic Current system for regional climatic evolution. ’Iceland sits as a “fossil trap” on one of the most interesting biogeographic exchange routes on the planet - the North Atlantic. The fossil floras of Iceland document both local vegetational response to global climate change, and more importantly, help to document the nature of biotic migration across the North Atlantic in the last 15 million years. In this state-of-the-art volume, the authors place sequential floras in their paleogeographic, paleoclimatic and geologic context, and extract a detailed history of biotic response to the dynamics of physical change.’ Bruce H. Tiffney, University of California, Santa Barbara ’This beautifully-illustrated monograph of the macro- and microfloras from the late Cenozoic of Iceland is a worthy successor to Oswald Heer’s “Flora fossilis arctica”. Its broad scope makes it a must for all scientists interested in climatic change and palaeobiogeography in the North Atlantic region. It will remain a classic for years to come.’ David K. Ferguson, University of Vienna

The contributions in this book explore several geologically significant sites and, in doing so, acknowledge and explore not just the geological exposures themselves, but also the people and issues that are fundamentally intertwined with the history of our science and its impact on our society. Through selective examples of outcrops and locales integral to the history of geology, we explore the evolution of modern geology, as well as the geodiversity and geoheritage of our planet. While the volume is far from comprehensive, the chapters contained herein detail a range for geoheritage value, scale of geoheritage sites and potential for geoheritage opportunities that will promote a broader, richer understanding of the complexity of the geoheritage of Earth. Importantly, many chapters offer a cautionary tale of sites almost lost to posterity and submit their take-away lessons for community mobilization towards geoheritage site protection.

This landmark scientific reference for scientists, researchers, and students of marine biology tackles the monumental task of taking a complete biodiversity inventory of the Gulf of Mexico with full biotic and biogeographic information. Presenting a comprehensive summary of knowledge of Gulf biota through 2004, the book includes seventy-seven chapters, which list more than fifteen thousand species in thirty-eight phyla or divisions and were written by 138 authors from seventy-one institutions in fourteen countries.This first volume of Gulf of Mexico Origin, Waters, and Biota, a multivolumed set edited by John W. Tunnell Jr., Darryl L. Felder, and Sylvia A. Earle, provides information on each species' habitat, biology, and geographic range, along with full references and a narrative introduction to the group, which opens each chapter.