Publisher's Synopsis
<div>Breathtaking in scope, this is the first survey of the entire <br>ecological history of life on land—from the earliest traces <br>of terrestrial organisms over 400 million years ago to the <br>beginning of human agriculture. By providing myriad insights <br>into the unique ecological information contained in the <br>fossil record, it establishes a new and ambitious basis for <br>the study of evolutionary paleoecology of land ecosystems. <br><br>A joint undertaking of the Evolution of Terrestrial <br>Ecosystems Consortium at the National Museum of Natural <br>History, Smithsonian Institution, and twenty-six additional <br>researchers, this book begins with four chapters that lay out <br>the theoretical background and methodology of the science of <br>evolutionary paleoecology. Included are a comprehensive <br>review of the taphonomy and paleoenvironmental settings of <br>fossil deposits as well as guidelines for developing <br>ecological characterizations of extinct organisms and the <br>communities in which they lived. The remaining three <br>chapters treat the history of terrestrial ecosystems through <br>geological time, emphasizing how ecological interactions have <br>changed, the rate and tempo of ecosystem change, the role of <br>exogenous "forcing factors" in generating ecological change, <br>and the effect of ecological factors on the evolution of <br>biological diversity. <br><br>The six principal authors of this volume are all associated <br>with the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems program at the <br>National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.</div>
