Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) occur across most of the world's drylands and are sensitive indicators of dryland degradation. Accounting for shifts in biocrust composition is important for quantifying integrity of arid and semi-arid ecosystems, but the best methods for assessing biocrusts are uncertain. We investigate the utility of surveying biocrust morphogroups, a reduced set of biotic c...

AbstractThe Aitamir Formation is divided into two members the lower sandstone and the upper shale. 32 genera and 57 species of foraminifera have been recognized. According to identified foraminifera Rotalipora appenninica Interval Zone, Rotalipora globotruncanoides (Rotalipora brotzeni) interval zone and Whiteinella aumalensis-Dicarinella canaliculata assemblage zone are proposed and a l Albian...

Analysis of benthic foraminiferal assemblages was performed in Callovian deposits of the Farsian Formation Northeastern Alborz; Iran. The sequence of Callovian at the Goznawwi area consists mainly of soft marls , which contain high-diversity calcareous assemblages. In this foraminiferal succession nine morphogroups were differentiated according to shell architecture (general shape, mode of coil...

We studied Upper Cretaceous and Lower Paleogene benthic foraminifera from the Agost section (southeastern Spain) to infer paleobathymetrical changes and paleoenvironmental turnover across the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/P) transition. Benthic foraminifera indicate uppermost bathyal depths at Agost during the Abathomphalus mayaroensis Biochron (from about 400 kyr before the K/P boundary) through the...

We studied Upper Cretaceous and Lower Paleogene benthic foraminifera from the Agost section (southeastern Spain) to infer paleobathymetrical changes and paleoenvironmental turnover across the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/P) transition. Benthic foraminifera indicate uppermost bathyal depths at Agost during the Abathomphalus mayaroensis Biochron (from about 400 kyr before the K/P boundary) through the...

Since Frank Livingstone proposed the idea that there are no races, only clines, in 1962, little has changed how anthropologists study and, ultimately, estimate ancestry. How we talk about of human variation may have changed—shifting away from "racial" labels and toward those supposed ancestral origins—but methods use to label analyze groups, however termed, remained same. The author suggests a ...

This paper focuses on the quantitative analyses of Early Miocene ostracods in south and north of the Sirjan area, southwest of Kerman. Detailed studies resulted in identification of 23 species of ostracoda. The coexisting benthic foraminifera and comparing the identified microfauna assemblages with previous studies confirms the Early Miocene age for the strata. The quantitative analysis show a ...

Abstract Environmental heterogeneity across the landscape can cause lineage divergence and speciation. The Geonoma macrostachys (Arecaceae) species complex has been proposed as a candidate case of ecological speciation in Amazonia due to evidence habitat partitioning pre-zygotic reproductive barriers between co-occurring morphotypes at local scale. In this study, we provide continent-wide persp...