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........ published in NEWSLETTER # 54

CENOZOIC PLANTS AND CLIMATES OF THE ARCTIC
by Professor M.C. Boulter and Professor H.C. Fisher, University of East London, London (U.K.)

The 26 chapters in this book (NATO ASI SERIES I27) review our current knowledge of the climatic and botanical changes in the Arctic over the last 75 million years. It offers a critical and multidisciplinary approach and includes contributions from geology (experts in continental drift), eco_ physiology (changing atmosphere composition), marine biology (phytoplankton studies), and fossil plants.

For the first time, scientists from all countries around the Arctic are represented and much data, previously not shared by the two sides of the cold war, are combined and compared: Plans for further international contributions are described.

As a result of the work described in this book the unique features of the changing Arctic vegetation through the Cenozoic are becoming clear. At such high latitudes and with warm temperatures and little wind the environment was quite different from anything known today and so conventional uniformitarian methods of study cannot be used. Different patterns of migration of many of the so_called "Arcto_Tertiary" plants are becoming understood and the evolutionary changes are being described. Movements of ferns, conifers and angiosperms from both sides of the Pacific rim went east across North America to Europe as well as west across Asia. The importance of land bridges and seaways in helping and obstructing these changes is shown in many of the articles and the fascinating consequences of this for biological and environmental reconstruction makes fascinating reading. It is a detective story with a complex plot and many different kinds of clues, but the final outcomes are not quite yet clear.
Reference books: A108, C308, I27

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