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1 Department of Geology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, UK
2 Postgraduate Research Institute for Sedimentology, The University, PO Box 227, Reading RG6 2AB, UK
The papers in this volume critically review the use of fossils, including their inorganic skeletal tissue or their soluble organic remains, for the analysis of palaeoenvironments. The contributions are not limited to traditional palaeontological techniques but are multi-disciplinary, drawing on a host of geochemical, palaeoecological and palaeontological methods. This holistic approach is essential if the potential pitfalls of a strictly uniformitarian approach are to be avoided. If a range of methods are used, and the results compared, then different environmental controls can be isolated. This methodology is of importance to sedimentologists, stratigraphers and palaeontologists who need to maximize their palaeoenvironmental interpretations from palaeontological data. The implications of this work are fundamental to correct interpretations of depositional environments, facies models, sequence stratigraphy and palaeoclimates.
The approach taken in the volume is analytical rather than taxonomic. As such, the techniques used to analyse the effects of different environmental parameters are focused on, rather than what can be learnt from the study of particular fossil groups. This approach is therefore different to that found in many texts (e.g. Dodd & Stanton 1981; Clarkson 1986), where the emphasis is on the palaeoecological value of different taxonomic groups and is more similar to the short reviews of ‘Fossils as environmental indicators’ in Briggs & Crowther (1990). This analytical approach leads to a more thorough analysis of palaeoenvironments. By using a range of techniques, from the traditional taxonomic uniformitarianism to the more recently developed geochemical and isotopic analyses of mineralized skeletons and soluble organic tissue from plants
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This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
