Editors: A.A. Velichko and V.P. Nechaev
Today, the vast expanse of Russia, from Western Europe to the Pacific Ocean and from the Arctic Ocean to the countries of Central Asia, has mostly a strong continental climate, with maritime influence in the Far East. But through the Paleogene and Neogene, the great transgression of the Tethys and Paratethys seas expanded from the Mediterranean region northward over the West Siberian lowlands to the Arctic Ocean, bringing with them fluctuating subtropical and warm-temperate climatic conditions, as reconstructed from plant and animal fossils and other paleoclimatic proxies. A cooling trend in the Pliocene culminated in the Quaternary with repeated advances of the Scandinavian ice sheet west of the Ural Mountains, along with the development of permafrost and deposition of loess beyond the ice sheet and over much of Siberia. Compilation of isotopic and microfossil data from the bordering oceans expands the geographic scope of the paleoclimatic reconstructions. This book, translated from a Russian volume published by the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geography, summarizes the paleoclimatic aspects of the geologic and paleontologic records from ten different areas in Russia and provides quantitative estimates for the repeated changes in temperature and precipitation for the past 65 million years.
ISBN Number: 0813723825
Pages: 226
Product Category: EBooks