Anthony Fiorillo has been exploring the Arctic since 1998. For him, like many others, the Arctic holds the romance of uncharted territory, extreme conditions, and the inevitable epic challenges that arise. For Fiorillo, however, the Arctic also holds the secrets of the history of life on Earth, and its fossils bring him back field season after field season in pursuit of improving human understanding of ancient history. His studies of the rocks and fossils of the Arctic shed light on a world that once was, and provide insight into what might be.

This volume explores geological boundaries in time and space using palynology and micropalaeontology. Boundaries produce distinct signatures in the micropalaeontological record. They can tell us much about the response of biotic systems to environmental change in both marine and terrestrial realms. Different microfossil groups and geological contexts require their own approaches, definitions and considerations of boundaries. The papers here cover the methodology of boundary identification from biostratigraphical, ecological and palaeoenvironmental perspectives.

CD-ROM contains: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Database and Supplementary Data for Chapters.

Although it is generally accepted that the Arctic Ocean is a very sensitive and important region for changes in the global climate, this region is the last major physiographic province of the earth whose short-and long-term geological history is much less known in comparison to other ocean regions. This lack of knowledge is mainly caused by the major technological/logistic problems in reaching this harsh, ice-covered region with normal research vessels and in retrieving long and undisturbed sediment cores. During the the last about 20 years, however, several international and multidisciplinary ship expeditions, including the first scientific drilling on Lomonosov Ridge in 2004, a break-through in Arctic research, were carried out into the central Artic and its surrounding shelf seas. Results from these expeditions have greatly advanced our knowledge on Arctic Ocean paleoenvironments. Published syntheses about the knowledge on Arctic Ocean geology, on the other hand, are based on data available prior to 1990. A comprehensive compilation of data on Arctic Ocean paleoenvironment and its short-and long-term variability based on the huge amount of new data including the ACEX drilling data, has not been available yet. With this book, presenting (1) detailed information on glacio-marine sedimentary processes and geological proxies used for paleoenvironmental reconstructions, and (2) detailed geological data on modern environments, Quaternary variability on different time scales as well as the long-term climate history during Mesozoic-Tertiary times, this gap in knowledge will be filled.*Aimed at specialists and graduates *Presents background research, recent developments, and future trends*Written by a leading scholar and industry expert