This book describes and interprets Upper Permian and Lower Triassic rocks and their fossils in the region of the eastern Tethys, bringing together information gathered in the International Geological Correlation Programme Project 203.

Permian and Triassic are the interval known for the integration and separation of Pangea, the closure of the Palaeotethys and the opening of Mesotethys. They were associated with a series of worldwide events including the Late Palaeozoic glaciation and succeeding extensive evaporatic and reef formations, the end-Palaeozoic regression, strong orogenies and widespread volcanism and magmatism, and finally, the Permo-Triassic biotic macro-extinction. These events resulted in the formation of enormous reserves of coal, petroleum, evaporites, phosphorites and metal resources. The Permian and Triassic thus constitutes a time interval particularly important both for understanding the Earth's history and for exploration of mineral resources.The book aims to reconstruct the Permian-Triassic history of Pangea, Palaeo-Tethys and Palaeo-Pacific through stratigraphic, palaeogeographic and other interdisciplinary approaches. It consists of two parts. Part 1 deals with regional stratigraphy of Tethyan and western Circum-Pacific countries which is the basis for interregional correlation, and palaeogeography. Part 2 deals with the biotic evolution at the Permian-Triassic transition, focusing on the major invertebrate groups: foraminifers, radiolarians, brachiopods, ammonoids and conodonts.

The extinction that wiped out 95% of the living species at the end of the Paleozoic era can be explained by the fact that when it happened, all landmasses were one continent, Pangea, with an inner ocean, the Paleo-Tethys. This ocean included the richest n

The existence of rapid and even catastrophic turnovers within the Phanerozoic ecosystems has been discussed controversially for more than 170 years. Since 1980 this discussion has become even more intensive after the hypothesis of Alvarez, explaining the end-Cretaceous mass extinction as the result of a huge asteroid impact on the Earth. This theory stimulated several thousand papers and is still controversial. The international research programme on "Global Biological Events in Earth History" attempts to bring the discussion back to the facts by using multidisciplinary investigations of the major Phanerozoic events. The results of an international group of experts are presented giving a wealth of information and a thorough discussion of the causes of the various global events.

The culmination of more than fifty years of research by the foremost living expert on plant classification, Diversity and Classification of Flowering Plants is an important contribution to the field of plant taxonomy. In the last decade, the system of classifying plants has been thoroughly revised. Instead of describing every individual family, Takhtajan includes descriptions in keys to families, which he calls "descriptive keys." The advantage of descriptive keys is that they give both the characteristic features of the families and their differences. The delimitation of families and orders drastically differs from the one accepted by the Englerian school and from the one accepted in Arthur Cronquist's system. Takhtajan favors the smaller, more natural families and orders, which are more coherent and better-defined, where characters are easily grasped, and which are more suitable for information retrieval and phylogenetic studies, including cladistic analysis (because it reduces polymorphic codings).

Carbon Isotope Stratigraphy, Volume Five in the Advances in Sequence Stratigraphy series, covers research in stratigraphic disciplines, including the most recent developments in the geosciences. This fully commissioned review publication aims to foster and convey progress in stratigraphy with its inclusion of a variety of topics, including Carbon isotope stratigraphy - principles and applications, Interpreting Phanerozoic d13C patterns as periodic glacio-eustatic sequences, Stable carbon isotopes in archaeological plant remains, Review of the Upper Ediacaran-Lower Cambrian Detrital Series in Central and North Iberia: NE Africa as possible Source Area, Calibrating d13C and d18O chemostratigraphic correlations across Cambrian strata of SW, and much more. Contains contributions from leading authorities in the field Informs and updates on all the latest developments in the field Aims to foster and convey progress in stratigraphy, including geochronology, magnetostratigraphy, lithostratigraphy, event-stratigraphy, and more