Edward J. Petuch – författare

Painting a complete picture of the history of the Everglades, The Geology of the Everglades and Adjacent Areas brings together theperspectives of various geoscientists to provides an overview of the geology, paleontology, and paleoceanography of the Everglades region. It emphasizes the upper 300 m of the geologic framework of the area and gives insight into the local stratigraphy, geomorphology, lithology, and historical geology. Building upon the geologic nomenclature and stratigraphic sequences set down by the Florida Geological Survey, the book includes redefinitions of some previously poorly known formations, the chronological fine-tuning of other poorly known units, and the description of 7 new members.Designed to be a field guide as well as a reference, the book is illustrated with photographs of exposed geologic sections, stratotype localities, collection sites, and details of interesting fossil beds. It contains 124 full-page illustrations with 69 black and white figures, 43 black and white plates of index fossils, and 12 full color plates of simulated space shuttle images of Florida’s ancient seas and coastlines. This text is accompanied by downloadable resources that feature animated maps along with a Power Point presentation of simulated space shuttle imagery of Eocene-to-Holocene Florida. The book is arranged by geologic time, ranging from the late Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene to the Holocene. The authors place lithostratigraphic descriptions of the geologic formations and members into this chronological framework, along with the paleogeography of the seas and lakes within which they were deposited. They also emphasize biostratigraphy with over 1000 index fossils listed and over 400 illustrated. The book brings together information previously spread through innumerable publications, saving you the time and effort it would take to assemble and cross-reference multiple sources.

>The rich fossil record of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains of the United States is a gold mine for interested scientists. The last thirty million years of Earth history are superbly chronicled by a succession of fossil assemblages extending from the St. Lawrence River to Florida. Marine scientists, paleontologists, and systematic biologists alike need a thorough guide to interpret this history.Cenozoic Seas: The View from Eastern North America analyzes the changing geography, the arrival and departures of ecosystems and species, and the affect of climate on living things. The author classifies all of the region's fossil-bearing formations and their contents within a logical, descriptive framework of space and time, providing a clear path for those studying evolution and extinction within specific communities of organisms.The book is also an excellent field guide for fossil collectors, providing detailed information for all species illustrated. Many organisms have never before been illustrated in a book on fossil shells.

The authors have done an outstanding job of compiling decades of data collected by their own field reconnaissance and other geoscientists… This represents a significant contribution to the understanding of the development of the Florida carbonate platform, and it will assist other disciplines as they strive for better understanding of our groundwater resources, aquifer characterizations, paleoenvironmental interpretations, and historical/educational geology programs.Walt Schmidt, Florida State Geologist & Chief, Florida Geological Survey, USA (praise for the first edition)Painting a complete picture of the history of the Everglades, Ancient Seas of Southern Florida: The Geology and Paleontology of the Everglades Region, Second Edition provides an overview of the geology, paleontology, and paleoceanography of the region. It emphasizes the upper 300m of the geologic framework of the area and gives insight into the local stratigraphy, geomorphology, lithology, and historical geology. Designed to be a field guide as well as a reference, the book is illustrated in full color with brand new photographs of exposed geologic sections, stratotype localities, collection sites, and details of interesting fossil beds.In this book, the authors illustrate almost 800 of the most important and diagnostic stratigraphic index fossils found in these beds, including over 50 species of corals and almost 700 species of mollusks, along with echinoderms, crustaceans, echinoids, petrified wood, and aquatic vertebrates. A new edition of The Geology of the Everglades and Adjacent Areas, it contains larger images of fossil shells, corals, and echinoderms and includes new updated geological data and concepts, as well as an expanded iconography of stratigraphic index fossils. Based on the data gleaned from these fossils, it also offers a series of geomorphological visualizations, showing the possible appearances of the Florida Peninsula during the times when it was covered by tropical seas, from the Oligocene to the late Pleistocene.This second edition provides a new perspective on both the historical geology of southern Florida and the evolution of one of America’s most beautiful natural treasures, the Everglades.

Marine biogeography, the study of the spatial distribution of organisms in the world’s oceans, is one of the most fascinating branches of oceanography. This book continues the pioneering research into the distributions of molluscan faunas, first studied by biologists over 160 years ago. It illustrates 1778 species of gastropods in full color, many of which are extremely rare and poorly known endemic species that are illustrated for the first time outside of their original descriptions. The spatial arrangements of malacofaunas shown in this book can be considered proxies for worldwide oceanic conditions and used as tools for determining patterns of global climate change. The book's documentation of evolutionary "hot spots" and geographically restricted endemic faunas can also be used as a base line for future studies on patterns of environmental deterioration and extinction in the marine biosphere. Documenting the evolution of the amazingly rich worldwide gastropod fauna, this book will appeal to physical and chemical oceanographers, systematic and evolutionary biologists, historical geologists, paleontologists, climatologists, geomorphologists, and physical geographers. The authors incorporate aspects of all of these disciplines into a new classification system for the nomenclature of biogeographical spatial units found in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate seas.

Molluscan Communities of the Florida Keys and Adjacent Areas: Their Ecology and Biodiversity is the first comprehensive overview of the ecology and biodiversity of the phylum Mollusca in the area of Florida extending from the Dry Tortugas and Ten Thousand Islands in the west to Palm Beach in the east. The book provides detailed analyses of molluscan faunas found in 20 different ecosystems, emphasizing the marine environments of the Florida Keys archipelago and its extensive coral reef tracts. Full-page color illustrations portray living animals, unique Keys environments, underwater ecosystems, and satellite images. More than 1,200 species of macromollusks—in 86 gastropod families and 54 bivalve families—are recorded from the study area, with color plates illustrating over 550 of the region’s most ecologically important species. For the first time in any book on the malacology of the Florida Keys area, the 20 marine ecosystems and their associated molluscan assemblages are arranged by the CMECS (Coastal Marine Ecological Classification Standard) system. This system emphasizes the hierarchical relationships determined by substrate type, bathymetry, and water chemistry. Along with complete species lists for every molluscan assemblage, this handy guide introduces ten newly-discovered gastropods, including new species in the families Muricidae, Buccinidae, Nassariidae, Naticidae, Turritellidae, and Olividae. Two new bivalves in the families Pectinidae and Arcidae are also described in a special systematic appendix. This richly illustrated book is written for the professional scientific audience interested in mollusks, marine ecology, evolution, and taxonomy as well as malacologists, naturalists, and shell collectors. It is also an ideal synoptic field guide, showing where individual species of mollusks can be found and within which ecosystems they occur.

>The rich fossil record of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains of the United States is a gold mine for interested scientists. The last thirty million years of Earth history are superbly chronicled by a succession of fossil assemblages extending from the St. Lawrence River to Florida. Marine scientists, paleontologists, and systematic biologists alike need a thorough guide to interpret this history.Cenozoic Seas: The View from Eastern North America analyzes the changing geography, the arrival and departures of ecosystems and species, and the affect of climate on living things. The author classifies all of the region's fossil-bearing formations and their contents within a logical, descriptive framework of space and time, providing a clear path for those studying evolution and extinction within specific communities of organisms.The book is also an excellent field guide for fossil collectors, providing detailed information for all species illustrated. Many organisms have never before been illustrated in a book on fossil shells.

In the Miocene and Pliocene fossil shell beds of the eastern United States, the single most spectacular molluscan species radiation is seen in the ecphora shells (the Tribe Ecphorini). These bizarrely shaped gastropods, with their distinctive ribbed shell sculpture, represent a separate branch of the Subfamily Ocenebridae, Family Muricidae. Characteristically, these muricid gastropods are heavily ornamented with spiral ribs and cords and are considered some of the most beautiful and interesting groups of fossil mollusks found along the Atlantic Coastal Plain and Floridian Peninsula. The ecphoras are greatly sought after by fossil collectors.The ecphora faunas, and their individual species and subspecies, are illustrated and described in detail, along with photographs of ecphora-bearing geological units and in-situ specimens. The authors list the 67 known species and subspecies that are recognized as valid, arranged by the eight genera and five subgenera that encompass these taxa.

Recent biodiversity studies, reported here for the first time, have shown that the molluscan fauna of the Gulf of Mexico is far richer and more complex than previously thought. As a result of these new discoveries, the Gulf malacofauna is shown to contain large numbers of endemic species that reside within four separate biogeographical subdivisions of the larger Carolinian Molluscan Province: the Floridian, Suwannean, Texan, and Yucatanean Subprovinces. These four Gulf biotic components, with each supporting its own endemic fauna, are shown here to be separated by distinct ecological and oceanographic barriers. The resultant physical and genetic isolation has led to the evolution of spectacular sibling species radiations, many unknown and undescribed until now. Some of the most conspicuous and important of these are found in the gastropod families Fasciolariidae, Volutidae, Conidae, Muricidae, and Busyconidae, all of which are dominant predators in their respective benthonic ecosystems. The species within these ecologically important families, along with hundreds of endemic taxa in 50 other gastropod and bivalve families, are illustrated here in Molluscan Faunas of the Gulf of Mexico: Endemism in North America’s Inland Sea on 132 color plates and are discussed in detail in the individual chapters. Special attention is given to the mollusks of poorly studied and virtually unknown ecosystems such as those on the deep reefs off the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas, the deep water coralline algal beds off western Florida, the Flower Garden Reefs off Texas, the petroleum seeps and brine pools of the Sigsbee Escarpment, the Campeche Bank Archipelago, and the deep water areas at the mouth of the Yucatan Channel.This new book is unlike previous taxonomic surveys of the Gulf of Mexico mollusks in that it highlights only the endemic species and genera and does not cover the large number of widespread Carolinian and Caribbean taxa that occur with them. In this aspect, the book is designed to be an augmentation to previous faunal surveys, adding hundreds more taxa that had been missed in these older surveys or were described after those earlier works had been published. The emphasis on endemic species and species complexes is meant to underscore the special nature of the Gulf of Mexico malacofauna, setting it aside from all others in the Tropical Western Atlantic Region.

The species richness seen in the living molluscan fauna of the East Coast of the United States is due to its composite nature, containing faunal elements from three contiguous molluscan provinces. These include:the southern warm water Carolinian Molluscan Province (Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Palm Beach, Florida)the central temperate water Virginian Molluscan Province (Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina)the northern cold water Acadian Molluscan Province (Labrador, Canada to Cape Cod, Massachusetts).Each of these provinces has been found to house a large component of endemic species, many illustrated for the first time in this book. Detailed descriptions are given of the predecessor faunas that are contained in the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene fossil beds of eastern North America. Hundreds of extinct species from these Neogene fossil beds are illustrated in separate chapters, describing the marine ecosystems and molluscan faunas that lived during these times. The living and fossil molluscan faunas from the entire coast are illustrated on 128 plates, showing some of the most interesting and beautiful shells that ever evolved anywhere in the world’s oceans.For the first time in any book on American shells, the most prevalent mollusk-bearing ecosystems of the East Coast are described and their resident molluscan faunas discussed in detail. This overview of the biodiversity of the coastal faunas can be used as a baseline for any future biological surveys, establishing the composition of the faunas that are now being impacted by global climate changes and higher marine temperatures.Over the past 25 million years, the East Coast has been subject to periodic ecological collapses, triggered by rapid and severe changes in the local marine environments. As shown here, most of these catastrophes have been caused by extraterrestrial events, such as asteroid impacts and the dimming of the sun by interstellar dust clouds. The resulting climatic degeneration decimated the shallow coastal marine ecosystems, especially in the southern part of the region. These extraterrestrial influences are correlated with the abrupt changes seen in the Neogene fossil record, and are outlined on the numerous charts, diagrams, and maps throughout the book.The book is the ideal companion to “Molluscan Faunas of the Gulf of Mexico: Endemism in North America’s Inland Sea” (Petuch and Berschauer, 2025).

Shallow water marine molluscan faunas are distributed in a pattern of distinct, geographically definable areas. This makes mollusks ideal for studying the distribution of organisms in the marine environment and the processes and patterns that control their evolution. Biogeography and Biodiversity of Western Atlantic Mollusks is the first book to use quantitative methodologies to define marine molluscan biogeographical patterns. It traces the historical development of these patterns for the subtropical and tropical western Atlantic. The book discusses the multistage process of evolving new taxa caused by eustatic fluctuations, ecological stress, and evolutionary selection. Drawing on his decades of intensive field work, the author defines three western Atlantic molluscan provinces and 15 subprovinces based on his Provincial Combined Index, a modern refinement of Valentine’s 50% rule. The faunal provinces—Carolinian, Caribbean, and Brazilian—are discussed in detail. The text defines the physical aspects of the provinces using quantitative data, with water temperature as the primary parameter. It discusses the details of the 15 subprovinces—geographically definable faunal subdivisions—as well as provinciatones, transition zones of provincial overlap. The author’s algorithms demonstrate that the bulk of the molluscan biodiversity is concentrated in 40 separate centers of speciation, ranging from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, south to Argentina. Many of these evolutionary hotspots reside on remote archipelagos and offshore banks as well as within areas of provincial overlap. The text describes some of the more exotic and poorly known areas and presents maps and color photographs of characteristic habitats, index species, and live animals, including over 400 species of rare and seldom seen shells.

Painting a complete picture of the history of the Everglades, The Geology of the Everglades and Adjacent Areas brings together theperspectives of various geoscientists to provides an overview of the geology, paleontology, and paleoceanography of the Everglades region. It emphasizes the upper 300 m of the geologic framework of the area and gives insight into the local stratigraphy, geomorphology, lithology, and historical geology. Building upon the geologic nomenclature and stratigraphic sequences set down by the Florida Geological Survey, the book includes redefinitions of some previously poorly known formations, the chronological fine-tuning of other poorly known units, and the description of 7 new members.Designed to be a field guide as well as a reference, the book is illustrated with photographs of exposed geologic sections, stratotype localities, collection sites, and details of interesting fossil beds. It contains 124 full-page illustrations with 69 black and white figures, 43 black and white plates of index fossils, and 12 full color plates of simulated space shuttle images of Florida’s ancient seas and coastlines. This text is accompanied by downloadable resources that feature animated maps along with a Power Point presentation of simulated space shuttle imagery of Eocene-to-Holocene Florida. The book is arranged by geologic time, ranging from the late Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene to the Holocene. The authors place lithostratigraphic descriptions of the geologic formations and members into this chronological framework, along with the paleogeography of the seas and lakes within which they were deposited. They also emphasize biostratigraphy with over 1000 index fossils listed and over 400 illustrated. The book brings together information previously spread through innumerable publications, saving you the time and effort it would take to assemble and cross-reference multiple sources.

The Chesapeake Miocene will always be considered a paleontological treasure. Given the richness and accessibility of the Maryland and Virginia Miocene shell beds, it seems remarkable that very few people have ever described new species from these strata over the past 185 years. Until now. Integrating elements from paleontology, geology, environmental science, and ecology, Molluscan Paleontology of the Chesapeake Miocene assembles previous research and the authors’ experience into a synoptic field guide.The most complete compendium of Miocene species created since 1904, this long-awaited resource lists nearly 500 species. It contains illustrations of 260 species, including more than 60 not found in any previous book and 26 newly discovered. It describes Chesapeake molluscan faunas in terms of local geology, paleoceanography, and marine paleobiology. Organized by stratigraphic geology, the book covers fossils of the Eastover, St Mary’s, Choptank, and Calvert Formations. It illustrates 24 collecting sites and fossil exposures, showing details of in situ specimens, along with maps of 4 Miocene paleoseas and detailed stratigraphic columns for Maryland and northern Virginia. The text is accompanied by downloadable resources with color illustrations of the forty known species of ecphora shells. Armed with these, you should be able to identify the species found in the amazingly rich shell beds of the Chesapeake Bay area.

Shallow water marine molluscan faunas are distributed in a pattern of distinct, geographically definable areas. This makes mollusks ideal for studying the distribution of organisms in the marine environment and the processes and patterns that control their evolution. Biogeography and Biodiversity of Western Atlantic Mollusks is the first book to use quantitative methodologies to define marine molluscan biogeographical patterns. It traces the historical development of these patterns for the subtropical and tropical western Atlantic. The book discusses the multistage process of evolving new taxa caused by eustatic fluctuations, ecological stress, and evolutionary selection. Drawing on his decades of intensive field work, the author defines three western Atlantic molluscan provinces and 15 subprovinces based on his Provincial Combined Index, a modern refinement of Valentine’s 50% rule. The faunal provinces—Carolinian, Caribbean, and Brazilian—are discussed in detail. The text defines the physical aspects of the provinces using quantitative data, with water temperature as the primary parameter. It discusses the details of the 15 subprovinces—geographically definable faunal subdivisions—as well as provinciatones, transition zones of provincial overlap. The author’s algorithms demonstrate that the bulk of the molluscan biodiversity is concentrated in 40 separate centers of speciation, ranging from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, south to Argentina. Many of these evolutionary hotspots reside on remote archipelagos and offshore banks as well as within areas of provincial overlap. The text describes some of the more exotic and poorly known areas and presents maps and color photographs of characteristic habitats, index species, and live animals, including over 400 species of rare and seldom seen shells.