TY - JOUR
T1 - Eocene paleontology and geology of western north America
AU - Greenwood, David R.
AU - Pigg, Kathleen
AU - DeVore, Melanie L.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, National Research Council of Canada. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Western North America preserves a rich record of Eocene life and environments under globally warm climates, and represents an interval where significant coal and other minerals were deposited. The Eocene is of interest to biologists and paleontologists for its record of the appearance and rise to dominance of many plant, insect, and mammal groups now typical of the temperate forests of North America, admixed with groups now well represented in tropical areas or restricted to eastern Asia. This record is also of interest for its potential contribution to our understanding of interactions between climate, the biota, and the ecosystems they occupied, under atmospheric carbon dioxide levels much higher than today. Documentation of the Eocene in western North America offers insights into the effects of future greenhouse climates. A special symposium held at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Vancouver, British Columbia, brought together geologists, paleontologists, and biologists with an interest in these questions. This paper introduces the special issue that includes a selection of papers drawn from that symposium as well as on related topics, spanning the Early to Late Eocene, and geographically from British Columbia to Colorado.
AB - Western North America preserves a rich record of Eocene life and environments under globally warm climates, and represents an interval where significant coal and other minerals were deposited. The Eocene is of interest to biologists and paleontologists for its record of the appearance and rise to dominance of many plant, insect, and mammal groups now typical of the temperate forests of North America, admixed with groups now well represented in tropical areas or restricted to eastern Asia. This record is also of interest for its potential contribution to our understanding of interactions between climate, the biota, and the ecosystems they occupied, under atmospheric carbon dioxide levels much higher than today. Documentation of the Eocene in western North America offers insights into the effects of future greenhouse climates. A special symposium held at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Vancouver, British Columbia, brought together geologists, paleontologists, and biologists with an interest in these questions. This paper introduces the special issue that includes a selection of papers drawn from that symposium as well as on related topics, spanning the Early to Late Eocene, and geographically from British Columbia to Colorado.
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U2 - 10.1139/cjes-2016-0043
DO - 10.1139/cjes-2016-0043
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84975029025
SN - 0008-4077
VL - 53
SP - 543
EP - 547
JO - Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
JF - Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
IS - 6
ER -