Full Title: Phanerozoic Faunal and Floral Realms of the Earth: The Intercalary Relations of the Malvinokaffric and Gondwana Faunal Realms with the Tethyan Faunal Realm

Authors: Arthur A. Meyerhoff, Arthur J. Boucot, Donna Meyerhoff Hull, and J.M. Dickins

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Biogeographical data comprise a largely neglected but potentially powerful tool for deciphering the tectonic evolution of the Phanerozoic Earth. This is true because the borders of biogeographical units are natural barriers, some of them tectonic in origin. The problem addressed in this study is that the boundaries of plates proposed by geophysicists and geologists do not always match the boundaries of biogeographical realms and lower rank units worked out by paleontologists and biostratigraphers. In this volume, biogeographical data has been compiled from early Paleozoic to Mesozoic sections worldwide, with emphasis on the broad geographical zone, or “intercalary zone,” that separates the middle Paleozoic Malvinokaffric Realm and late Paleozoic and younger Gondwana Realm from the warm realms of northern origin. Within this intercalary zone, northern and southern taxa occur within the same strata, or even within the same bed. The data make it clear that biogeographers, paleontologists, stratigraphers, structural geologists, tectonophysicists, and geophysicists need to work together now to bring the powerful tool of biogeography into tectonic reconstructions and tectonic models.

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Published: 5/01/1996

ISBN Number: 0-8137-1189-4

Pages: 78

Product Category: Memoirs