This compilation is a synthesis of Ordovician-Triassic conodont research undertaken in the Canadian Cordillera during the past decade. The studies include an overview of the record in Western Canada; a review of the paleontology; and descriptions of conodonts from the Cordillera Road River group in northern Yukon Territory, from the eastern and northern Canadian cordillera, of the Palliser Formation in the Rocky Mountains, and from the Cache Creek Complex in south-central B.C.

"The convergent margin of southern Alaska is considered one of the type areas for understanding the growth of continental margins through collisional tectonic processes. Collisional processes that formed this margin were responsible for multiple episodes of sedimentary basin development, subduction complex growth, magmatism, and deformation. Two main collisional episodes shaped this Mesozoic-Cenozoic continental margin. The first event was the Mesozoic collision of the allochthonous Wrangellia composite terrane. This event represents the largest addition of juvenile crust to western North America in the past 100 m.y. The second event is the ongoing collision of the Yakutat terrane along the southeastern margin of Alaska. This Cenozoic event has produced the highest coast mountain range on Earth (Saint Elias Mountains), the Wrangell continental arc, and sedimentary basins throughout southern Alaska. Active collisional processes continue to shape the southern margin of Alaska, mainly through crustal shortening and strike-slip deformation, large-magnitude earthquakes, and rapid uplift and exhumation of mountain belts and high sedimentation rates in adjacent sedimentary basins. This volume contains 24 articles that integrate new geophysical and geologic data, including many field-based studies, to better link the sedimentary, structural, geochemical, and magmatic processes that are important for understanding the development of collisional continental margins."--Publisher's website.

Conodonts, the tiny, phosphatic, tooth-like remains of an extinct group of early vertebrates, are the most important fossil group for biostratigraphy throughout their stratigraphic range from Late Cambrian to Late Triassic. This monograph represents a benchmark study of these important zonal fossils. The detailed paleontological work not only provides a taxonomic basis for future studies on early Paleozoic conodonts but also focuses on the evolution of conodonts in the early Ordovician, a time of extraordinary adaptive radiation. The taxonomic work provides detailed descriptions and illustrations of 185 species representing 69 genera. Seven new genera and 39 new species are described. The high diversity of taxa across the platform-to-basin transect shows the biogeographic differentiation and spatial ecological partitioning of conodonts through time. The taxonomy permits the refinement to the biostratigraphic zonation within two faunal realms for British Columbia that can be correlated with schemes elsewhere in North America and also internationally.

The Upper Triassic sections outcropping on the Queen Charlotte Islands contain outstanding successions of conodont and radiolarian microfossils. This report focuses on the successions about the Carnian-Norian boundary at several key localities. This boundary may coincide with an interval of significant change in global fauna and flora, particularly in terrestrial habitats. The purpose of the study reported is to demonstrate faunal change that may potentially be used in global correlation and definition of the Carnian-Norian boundary, and thus contribute towards the resolution of historical events that date from that time. The report summarizes the radiolarian change within the boundary interval identified primarily by conodonts but supplemented by some molluscan data.