Fossil assemblages

Upeniece, I. (2001) The unique fossil assemblage from the Lode Quarry (Upper Devonian, Latvia). Mitteilungen aus dem Museum fur Naturkunde in Berlin - Geowissenschaftliche Reihe 4, 1 01 -11 9. 

These six sites have several distinct features that must be explained the unusual nature of the fossil assemblage the unusual nature of the sediments and the unexpectedly high rate of preservation. 

The unusually high number of preserved MIS 5 sites (several orders of magnitude higher than expected) requires unusual conditions of preservation. In view of the fossil assemblage and the nature of the sediments we suggest that the catastrophic floods created extraordinary conditions for preservation of fossil remains and that they have not been destroyed because no comparable floods have occurred since last interglacial times in these caves. 

Critical testing of earth s oldest putative fossil assemblage from the 3.5 Ga Apex chert, Chinaman Creek, western Australia. Ptecambrian Res., 140, 55-102. 

As we have seen in the previous section, the micro-fossil assemblage of marine sediments is a key palaeoceanographic proxy. Other important proxies are based on the chemical composition of these microfossils, in terms of the chemical elements and the relative proportions of the different isotopes of those elements. Here, we provide a brief, fossil-group by fossil-group overview of some of these chemical proxies, and what they can teU us about past oceanic conditions and longterm cfimate change. 

Williams, M., Haywood, A. M., Hillenbrand, C.-D. Wilkinson, I. P. 2005Z>. Efficacy of data from Pliocene planktonic foraminifer calcite for spatial sea surface temperature reconstruction comparison with a fuUy coupled ocean-atmosphere GCM and fossil assemblage data for the mid-Pliocene. Geological Magazine, 142, 399-417. 

Transfer function A mathematical function describing the numerical relationship between one/several independent variables and one (several) dependent variable(s). Commonly used to infer past values of an environmental variable (e.g., pH, salinity) from the composition of fossil assemblages (e.g., diatom abundances). 

Early Devonian Horlick 0.54 Sandstone, shale with marine fossil assemblages... 

Diachronism of a lilhological boundary and the migration lime of a fossil assemblage. The tbssiliferous horizon may be regarded as a lime plane if the localities (a), (b) and (c) are not far distant. As a mle, lime planes cannot be identified. 

The term assemblage is used here in a wide sense, not as a synonym of Boucot s Benthic Assemblage (1975). Association is used for a recurrent fossil assemblage, with occasional significant variations. Community represents a recurrent, relatively constant and environment-related association. 

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