Paleontology in Ecology and Conservation [Paperback]

The fossil record contains unique long-term insights into how ecosystems form and function which cannot be determined simply by examining modern systems. It also provides a record of endangered species through time, which allow us to make conservation decisions based on thousands to millions of years of information. The aim of this book is to demonstrate how palaeontological data has been or could be incorporated into ecological or conservation scientific studies. This book will be written by palaeontologists for modern ecologists and conservation scientists. Manuscripts will fall into one (or a combination) of four broad categories: case studies, review articles, practical considerations and future directions. This book will serve as both a how to guide and provide the current state of knowledge for this type of research. It will highlight the unique and critical insights that can be gained by the inclusion of palaeontological data into modern ecological or conservation studies.

This, the first book on paleontology to focus specifically on ecology and conservation science, shows how the long-term insights provided in the fossil record inform our understanding of ecosystem dynamics in ways that the analysis of modern systems cannot.

Palaeontology and ecology  their common origins and later split.- Ecology needs a palaeontological perspective.- Reconciling Paleontological and Neontological Data: Issues of Scale, Taxonomy, and Taphonomy.- Building links between ecology and palaeontology with taphonomic studies of recent vertebrate communities.- Phylogeography and the fossil record.

From the reviews:

This book is aimed at researchers working in ecology and conservation who are interested in making use of the vast amount of information stored within the fossil record. The greatest strength of the book is that it teaches conservation planners how to access the vertebrate paleontological record, in order to extract the long-tlÍ