Two major groups of corals have essentially continuous records from the Early Ordovician (Tabulata) and Middle Ordovician (Rugosa) to the end of the Permian. A third major group, the living Scleractinia, range from Middle Triassic to Holocene. Additional groups have shorter ranges within the Paleozoic. The origins and relationships of these groups have been discussed for over 100 years. Relations between the Rugosa and Scleractinia have attracted the greatest interest because of their morphologic similarities and the time sequence. Arguments involve the significance of serial versus cyclic septal insertion, calcitic versus aragonitic skeletal mineralogy, and the time gap between the last rugosans and first scleractinians (there are no known Lower Triassic corals). Discussions of relationships among the various Paleozoic groups are commonly based on detailed morphological comparisons because of their overlapping stratigraphic ranges.

Recent work on the living corals and anemones supports a closer relationship between groups than is suggested by placing them in different orders or suborders. The paleontological record of “anemones” is slight, but it is reasonable to assume that one or more groups of skeletonless zoantharians persisted through long parts of the Phanerozoic. It is suggested that the major groups of zoantharian corals originated through the development of skeletons in various anemone groups at several different times.

Statistical analyses of occurrence data based on collections made from scattered Caribbean sections over the past 20 years indicate that turnover occurred in the Caribbean reef coral fauna between the late Miocene and early Pleistocene. The collections have been identified using standardized procedures, and age-dates assigned using high-resolution chronostratigraphic methods. During turnover, ~80% of the > 100 species and 17 of the 41 genera that were living in the Caribbean during the early Pliocene became extinct, and > 60% of the species now living in the Caribbean originated. Turnover involved increased speciation beginning in the late Miocene and ended with a pulse of extinction in Plio-Pleistocene time. Turnover was preceded by faunal collapse during the late Oligocene to early Miocene, and it was followed by stasis during the late Pleistocene to Recent. During these preceding and succeeding intervals, reef development was at a maximum, although reef coral diversity was relatively low. As a consequence of origination preceding extinction during turnover, most modern Caribbean reef coral species originated before the Plio-Pleistocene peak of extinction, under quite different ecological conditions from those in which they have lived over the past million years. The unusual relationship between origination and extinction may have been caused by changes in productivity associated with emergence of the Central American Isthmus, followed by the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation.

During turnover, faunal change was stepwise or gradual. Local assemblages consisted of a mix of extinct and living species, which varied in composition but not in richness. Important reef dominants such as Acropora palmata and A. cervicornis arose in the southern Caribbean and appear to have migrated northward. Faunal change took place in shallow exposed environments, before it occurred in deep protected environments that served as refuges. Plio-Pleistocene extinction was selective for corals with small colonies, and resulted in a faunal shift to the large, fast-growing species that dominate Caribbean reefs today.

An examination of any modern terrestrial ecosystem will reveal a vast array of arthropod (particularly insect) — plant interactions. It has been calculated that there are more than one million extant insect species, more than 400,000 plant species, and that the total number of their interactions exceeds their combined total. Studies of the co-evolution of insects and plants have indicated that the development of these interactions must have taken considerable time (Southwood, 1973, 1985; Strong et al., 1984). For example, the evolution of the angiosperms (flowering plants) and insects are seen to be closely interlinked (Friis et al., 1987).

Recent molecular analyses of the traditional scleractinian suborder Faviina have revealed a new Atlantic clade of reef corals, which disagrees with traditional classification. The new clade contradicts long-held notions of Cenozoic diversification being concentrated in the Pacific, and of Atlantic species bearing close evolutionary relationships with Pacific species. In the present paper, we outline an approach for integrating molecular, morphologic, and fossil data, which will allow future examination of the timing and phylogenetic context of the divergence of the new Atlantic clade. Our analyses are preliminary and focus on 17 genetically characterized species within the new Atlantic clade. The molecular dataset consists of 630 base pairs from the COI gene and 1143 base pairs from the cytB gene. The morphologic dataset consists of 25 traditional morphologic characters (86 states) in 57 species (23 extant and 32 extinct). Phylogenetic analyses are first performed separately on the molecular and morphologic (extant taxa only) datasets. Subsequent phylogenetic analyses involve adding fossil taxa to the morphologic dataset and performing a combined analysis for extant taxa.

The results of both molecular and morphologic phylogenetic analyses disagree with traditional classification. They also disagree with each other, indicating the two datasets provide different phylogenetic signals and are informative at different taxonomic levels. Molecular trees for the mitochondrial genes analyzed have higher bootstrap support for deeper nodes in the tree; morphologic trees have higher bootstrap support near branch tips. The addition of fossils to the morphologic dataset does not improve resolution within phylogenetic trees, but it does indicate that all of the major subclades within the new Atlantic clade originated prior to middle Eocene time. The pulse of origination associated with Plio-Pleistocene faunal turnover involved speciation within well-established clades. Examination of the geographic distributions of the taxa within each of the four resulting trees indicates that the origin of the Brazilian reef coral fauna involved more than one separate dispersal event or that the fauna may be descended from a larger Mio-Pliocene Atlantic (Caribbean to Brazil) species pool, portions of which have subsequently become extinct. Because of the complex nature of scleractinian evolution (involving possible hybridization), we advocate using a phylogenetic approach that compares multiple independent datasets, including datasets that are currently being developed for new microstructural characters.

Multivariate analysis can be defined as an analysis in which many variables are examined simultaneously. These types of analyses are invaluable in many scientific fields in which patterns and trends in complex systems must be studied. Multivariate analysis is used in community ecology and paleoecology to summarize patterns of variation between and within different communities so as to allow the ecologist to describe the major patterns and interpret the cause of variation. Some examples of plant paleoecological studies which have used multivariate techniques are Oltz (1969, 1971), Clapham (1971), Robichaux and Taylor (1977), Pheifer (1979), Spicer and Hill (1979), Frederickson (1981), Phillips and DiMichele (1981), Boulter and Hubbard (1982), LaPasha and Miller (1984), Farley and Dilcher (1986), and Kovach (1985, 1987).

Conventional paleontological wisdom holds that there are two major categories of fossil evidence: body fossils (skeletal remains), and trace fossils (including tracks and traces). Ichnology, the study of trace fossils, requires a parallel taxonomy of scientific names (parataxonomy or ichnotaxonomy), like the form taxa of fossil plant remains. This ichnotaxonomy describes a large variety of traces attributable to invertebrates (Hantzschel, 1975) and vertebrates (Haubold, 1984; Leonardi, 1984; Leonardi et al., 1986).

Over a decade has passed since Rudwick (1965b, 1970) and Ager (1967) reviewed the ecology of brachiopods, a hiatus partially filled by Brunton (1975) and Steele-Petrovic (1979). With the widespread use of SCUBA, we are finally beginning to learn about these dominantly subtidal (both Recent and fossil) organisms in their proper environment. A renaissance of ecologic interest in the phylum has produced much, and promises more. Already many text-book dogmas have been refuted and others questioned.

Given sweeping evolutionary changes in the diversity and environmental deployment of species that produce shells, destroy shells, and otherwise interact with shells, it would be surprising if patterns of shell accumulation did not change over Phanerozoic time. Documentation of such patterns might indicate how and to what degree post-mortem bias has changed, and thus the taphonomic comparability of data sets used in paleobiologic modelling. At the same time, long-term patterns in shell accumulation can be products of evolutionary ecology, and thus represent an underexploited source of paleobiological insight themselves.

The Cambrian Radiation was expressed as major changes in marine communities. High-diversity skeletalized metazoan faunas appeared and persisted with little change in the most proximal onshore habitats and show little expansion into the offshore through much of the long (ca. 24 m.y.) pretrilobitic Placentian Epoch on the Avalon microcontinent. These small shelly fossil communities and a large number of coelomate burrowers that appeared earlier in the Placentian comprise the Placentian Ecologic Evolutionary Unit (new)—the initial stage of the Cambrian Evolutionary Fauna. Early members of a number of high-level metazoan groups were concentrated in onshore habitats vacated by the demise of the Ediacaran fauna, where they diversified and, possibly, originated no earlier than latter part of the Placentian Epoch (543–ca. 519 (m.y.a.). Development of unstable substrates and predation in open shelf habitats occupied coelomate trace producers may have been a key factor in the restriction of diverse skeletalized metazoan faunas to peritidal habitats, where mineralized skeletons may have served as protection from desiccation and UV-damage. In contrast, the oldest trilobites are most diverse and abundant in offshore habitats, and their appearance in habitats dominated by large trace producers suggests a protective role of their mineralized integument.

Plants and shelly marine invertebrates often have diverse and densely packed communities that generate dense accumulations of organic remains. In contrast, populations in vertebrate communities are relatively dispersed in life, and normal annual mortality results in a relatively low density of remains scattered over the land surface. This attritional “bone rain” differs from unusual circumstances such as mass mortality and predator bone-collecting, which can generate high density accumulations of vertebrate remains in a short period of time.

Diatoms provide the chief Cenozoic biostratigraphic tool in marine sediments beneath high primary productivity zones, especially where calcareous fossils are rare or poorly preserved. Diatom biostratigraphy, which is based on originations and extinctions of unique taxa, is especially useful in circum-Antarctic, equatorial Pacific, and high latitude North Pacific marine successions, which are available largely from ocean drilling. Oligocene to Holocene diatom biostratigraphic zonations are correlated with the geopaleomagnetic timescale, resulting in age control of million-year to as little as hundred-thousand year resolution. Paleocene and Eocene zonations are less well developed and have lower chronostratigraphic control, but are more widely applicable, because planktonic diatom assemblages of the globally warm early Paleogene were less provincial. We review the principals and methods of biostratigraphy and the application of diatoms to age control in stratigraphic successions worldwide. Distinct biostratigraphic zonations defined for the low latitudes, the North Pacific and the Antarctic, are reviewed, and Atlantic records and Antarctic coastal records are discussed. New biostratigraphic tools are introduced, including multidimensional graphic correlation of published diatom ranges.

Crinoids were a common component of Paleozoic benthic paleocommunities, yet they have been under-utilized in paleoecological analyses. Recent efforts to incorporate disarticulated ossicles into these analyses have greatly increased the robustness of paleoecological patterns noted for the Crinoidea. Analyses of crinoid functional morphology, particularly filtration dynamics, have provided testable hypotheses concerning the distribution of crinoids among benthic environments. These models predict that crinoids with dense-mesh filtration fans should be most common in high energy, shoreward paleoenvironments, whereas open-fan crinoids should be most common in low-energy, offshore paleoenvironments. Review of the Paleozoic fossil record appears to support these general predictions—from the Late Ordovician to the end of the Paleozoic, dense-fan crinoids are most abundant in nearshore paleoenvironments, whereas open-fan crinoids are most abundant offshore.

The partitioning of crinoid diversity through the Paleozoic shifted through time. Beta diversity was highest in the Ordovician, implying that the early diversification of crinoids was focused on partitioning the benthic landscape among taxa. Beta diversity was quite low by the late Paleozoic, however, local and within-habitat alpha diversity was much greater than during the Ordovician. This resulted in generally higher levels of eurytopy in the late Paleozoic compared to the Ordovician. Patterns of faunal disassembly associated with regional extinctions in North America during the Ordovician and Permian underscore the differences in the paleoecology of these crinoid faunas.

Ancient and modern marine carbonate hardgrounds offer unusual opportunities to study the evolution of communities from the Early Cambrian into the Holocene. Throughout this time the general physical conditions of a hardground community have been similar. The substrate is hard so sessile organisms must either attach to its surface, nestle in cavities, or bore into it for occupation. These organisms are thus preserved in situ. Since space is often the limiting physical resource, organisms must have ways of obtaining and defending it, and these competitive hierarchies are often preserved in the spatial relationships of the species. Scouring and/or burial in sediment usually marks the end of the brief habitation.

Skeleton microstructure of Recent scleractinians proves to be a valuable suprageneric taxonomical criterion, and the same has been stated with respect to Mesezoic corals where skeletonal preservation is aragonite. In paleontological practice, septal microstructure is decisive in discrimination of taxa among homeomorphic genera of different families. Similarities of microstructural features of some Recent and fossil corals encompass the genera in common taxa of higher ranks and allow for reconstruction of their presumed phylogeny.

The Big Five mass-extinction events are characterized by dramatic changes in primary producers. Initial disturbance to primary producers is usually followed by a succession of pioneers that represent qualitative and quantitative changes in standing crops of land plants and/or phytoplankton. On land, a transient collapse of arborescent (tree-bearing) vegetation and the rapid spread of a pioneer vegetation dominated by ferns and fern allies characterizes the Permian/Triassic (P/T), Triassic/Jurassic (T/J), and Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) mass-extinction events. The availability of low-quality food, such as herbaceous low-growing plants, likely played a role in triggering secondary extinctions of herbivores (reptiles, insects). Furthermore, malformation of acritarchs, pollen, and spores during the end-Ordovician, end-Devonian, P/T and T/J extinctions also suggests primary producers were of lesser quality. More importantly, changes in vegetation drove important increases in weathering and erosion leading to elevated nutrient transfer from the continents to the oceans. In the marine realm, the end-Ordovician, end-Devonian, end-Permian, and end-Triassic extinction events are all followed by periods of high primary production, which is reflected in the widespread deposition of black shales. Due to their small size, low nutritional quality, and possible toxicity, the abundance of picoplankton, such as prasinophytes, acritarchs, as well as bacterioplankton (cyanobacteria and green sulfur bacteria) may have been additional factors in delaying ecosystem recovery.

This article discusses past greenhouse climates with an emphasis on recent progress in the comparison of models and data in the Eocene. These past climates—about 10° warmer than modern—provide valuable lessons in the climate dynamics of a world with higher-than-modern greenhouse-gas concentrations, reduced temperature gradients, and a lack of polar ice. Some key points that emerge from this analysis are: 1) Past greenhouse climates are characterized by warmer-than-modern global mean temperatures and winter season warmth, as well as strong polar amplification of warming that generates weak meridional temperature gradients. 2) A trade-off exists between heat transport in a warmer world and a world with smaller temperature gradients; a range exists in which a warmer world with weak temperature gradients can transport as much heat as a cooler world with stronger gradients. 3) These features can be reproduced in models if global mean and tropical temperatures are allowed to increase significantly over modern values. 4) Local radiative-convective feedbacks play an important role, perhaps dominating over transport, or acting in conjunction with transport to maintain relatively warm, weak temperature gradient climates. 5) Past greenhouse climates appear to have many of the modern modes of variability from orbital to interannual. 6) Modeling efforts are most useful when done independently of proxy data; model output can then be compared with proxies to evaluate potential weaknesses in the model. 7) Model-data mismatch might be due to incorrect boundary or initial conditions or resolution, or to missing or incomplete representation of relevant physics. 8) Refinements and new developments in proxies for temperature and other variables offer much potential for discriminating among the next generation of modeled scenarios, thereby allowing a better understanding of the conditions under which greenhouse climates exist.

Microfossils are most profitably studied as discrete specimens that have been freed from the enclosing rock matrix. Techniques for separating microfossils from matrix and from matrix residues are numerous and relatively simple. Choice of a procedure will depend on the types of microfossils sought, their composition, and the laboratory facilities available. Our own work deals mostly with phosphatic microfossils (conodonts), which are chemically resistant and may be freed from rock matrix and concentrated fairly easily. Calcareous microfossils, such as foraminifers and ostracodes, may be separated and concentrated from relatively unconsolidated sediments rather easily, but freed from some other rock types only with considerable effort (Lethiers and Crasquin-Soleau, 1988), inadequately, or not at all. Many of the laboratoryprocessing techniques for phosphatic, calcareous, and siliceous microfossils are the same. We have not included techniques (e.g., thin-sectioning, preparation of latex replicas, or slabbing) for studying these microfossil groups in rock matrix.

Although the majority of publications on extant nonmarine ostracode species in North America are concerned with lacustrine settings, many species that are potentially valuable as indicators of water quality changes live in non-lacustrine settings. Ostracode distributions in 157 springs, wetlands and streams in the United States are examined here in order to assess 1) species richness, 2) association with physical and chemical parameters of their habitats and 3) the presence of potentially useful biomonitors and environmental sentinels. The 157 non-lacustrine sites are a subset of a large database (North American Non-marine Ostracode Database: NANODe version 1) consisting of 611 mostly lacustrine sites with ostracode species, presence-absence data, hydrochemistry and climate data (Forester et al., in review). Of the 89 species represented in NANODe version 1, 51 species are found in springs, 59 species are found in wetlands and only 15 species are found in streams. Many species are found in at least two of these habitats and some in all three. Principal Components Analysis of these 157 sites indicates that 71% of the variance is explained by salinity (total ionic concentration), alkalinity and temperature, a result consistent with previously published analyses of natural water. Cluster analysis shows that spring species are most strongly tied to temperature, whereas wetlands and streams are most strongly tied to ionic composition. Three species are found to be potentially valuable biomonitors: Cavernocypris wardi in springs, Fabaeformiscandona rawsoni in wetlands and Physocypria globula in streams.

Carbonate concretions may preserve exceptional soft-tissue fossils. Organismal decay in sediment can produce HCO3− faster than it diffuses away, creating a local microenvironment of high alkalinity around the decaying organism that promotes carbonate precipitation. Infilling of sediment pore-space around the decaying organism decreases permeability and inhibits decay, thus increasing preservation potential within the concretion and promoting soft-tissue preservation. Different patterns of concretion growth may promote different mechanisms of soft-tissue preservation. Other factors such as shifting salinity and clay mineral chemistry, which increase preservation potential in the depositional environment, also promote soft tissue preservation within concretions. The rate of concretion nucleation and growth affects preservation; the faster concretions nucleate and grow, the better the preservation. Concretionary preservation is biased both by concretion-promoting environments and organism size effects on concretion formation.