A selection of papers presented at the 13th International Conference of the International Bryozoology Association held in Concepción Chile in January 2004 and hosted by the Universidad de Concepción and Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción. The topics presented in this volume reflect the diversity of studies on bryozoa with authors from 18 countries. They include investigations in seven thematic areas: ecology and life strategies; recent and fossil faunas of Australia and New Zealand; past and present bryozoans from both Antarctic and Arctic seas; geology and palaeontology of bryozoans from Eurasia and North America; fresh water bryozoans around the world; fossil bryozoans of the Mediterranean and Tethyan realms and evolution and diversity of recent species. This volume represents the newest advances made in bryozoological studies during the last three years, and makes a significant contribution to the literature.

Science, the growth of reliable knowledge, became a major triumph of the European Enlightenment in the seventeenth century, under the guise of ‘natural philosophy’: investigating what the earth and universe are made of and how things work. It took another century for the parallel subject ‘natural history’ to glimpse how the earth, its geography and its richly diverse life came to be. Later, geology and biology became intertwined as biogeohistory—an ever-changing environmental theatre hosting an ever-changing evolutionary play. This environmental theatre has shifted with the making and breaking of supercontinents, the birth and death of global oceans, and the rise and fall of global hothouses and ice ages. The evolutionary play begins with biostratigraphy, wherein fossils revealed deep time and ancient environments and built the first meaningful geological timescale, and ends with the still young science of palaeoceanography—central to which are microfossils, rich in information about the oceans and climates of the past. In Southern Limestones under Western Eyes, Brian McGowran recounts the history of biogeohistory itself: the ever-changing perceptions of rocks, fossils and landscapes, from the late 1600s to the present. McGowran’s focus is southern Australia, the north shore of the dying Australo-Antarctic Gulf, in an era bracketed by two catastrophes: the extinction of dinosaurs and the emergence of humans.

It has been increasingly realized by sedimentologist in the petroleum industry and academia that integration of ichonological information into sedimentological models, and vice versa, is one of the main means by which we can improve our understanding of ancient depositional environments. This volume aims to provide an analytical review of yhe ichnology of all major depositional environments and the use ichnology in biostratigraphic and sequence stratigraphic analysis, as well as highly refined palaeeoenvironmental studies. The remit of the book is achieved through a combination of review articles and novel research papers that outline methodologies and protocols for improving our understanding of ancient palaeoenvironments. Trace fossils from microscopic borings to dinosaur footprints are considered.

The papers in this volume provide an exhaustive inventory and description of the most complete sedimentary sequences across the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary (EOB) from all over the world, and present a synthesis of the biotic and chemico-physical events detected at the Eocene-Oligocene transition. The content of the book represents the results achieved by Project no. 174 on ``Geological Events at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary'' of the International Geological Correlation Program, sponsored by UNESCO. The project was carried out over a five year period and has provided a wealth of new and interesting information.

This book documents and interprets the onshore Cenozoic temperate carbonate depositional system along the southern margin of Australia. These strata, deposited in four separate basins, together with the extensive modern marine system offshore, comprise the largest such cool-water carbonate system on the globe. The approach is classic and comparative but the information is a synthesis of recent research and new information. A brief section of introduction outlines the setting, modern comparative sedimentology offshore, and structure of the Cenozoic onshore. The core of the book is a detailed analysis and illustration of the four Eocene to Pleistocene successions. Deposits range from temperate carbonates, to biosiliceous spiculites, to marginal marine siliciclastics. Each unit is interpreted, as much as possible, based on our understanding of the modern offshore depositional system. A subsequent part concentrates on diagenesis both before and after the late Miocene uplift. It turns out that alteration in the two packages is entirely different. The preceding attributes of each succession are then interpreted on the basis of controlling factors such as tectonics, oceanography, climate, and glaciation of nearby Antarctica. This research has revealed new implications for the interpretation of specific attributes of cool-water carbonate sedimentology that could only be discovered from the rock record. Insights concerning cyclicity, reef mounds, biosiliceous deposition, and trophic resources are detailed in the next section. The concluding part focuses on global comparisons, especially the Mediterranean and New Zealand.

Dennis Curry was a remarkable polymath and philanthropist, leading a double-life as one of the UK's most gifted amateur geologists, whilst at the same time being an extremely successful businessman (as Managing Director of Currys Ltd). This Festschrift, authored by friends and specialists from Britain and France, pays tribute to his often seminal research as well as exhibiting the wide range of his geological interest. It contains 12 chapters and covers several differing aspects of micropalaeontology (pteropods, diatoms and especially foraminifera), Strontium Isotope Stratigraphy, Hampshire Basin stratigraphy and palaeogeography, as well as major contributions on English Channel sedimentology and the great faunal turnover affecting mammals at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. A scientific appreciation of Dennis Curry, "the professional amateur", with recollections of former colleagues at University College, London (where he was Visiting Professor), together with an assessment of the valuable collections he established and donated to The Natural History Museum, are also included. Copiously illustrated, this book is a must for all geologists.