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\"The Nile Basin contains a record of human activities spanning the last million years. However, the interactions between prehistoric humans and environmental changes in this area are complex and often poorly understood. This comprehensive book explains in clear, non-technical terms how prehistoric environments can be reconstructed, with examples drawn from every part of the Nile Basin. Adopting a source-to-sink approach, the book integrates events in the Nile headwaters with the record from marine sediment cores in the Nile Delta and offshore. It provides a detailed record of past environmental changes throughout the Nile Basin and concludes with a review of the causes and consequences of plant and animal domestication in this region and of the various prehistoric migrations out of Africa into Eurasia and beyond. A comprehensive overview, this book is ideal for researchers in geomorphology, climatology and archaeology.\"--back cover

Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene epochs 3.6 to 0.8 million years ago 1 had climates resembling those forecasted under future warming 2 . Palaeoclimatic records show strong polar amplification with mean annual temperatures of 11–19 °C above contemporary values 3 , 4 . The biological communities inhabiting the Arctic during this time remain poorly known because fossils are rare 5 . Here we report an ancient environmental DNA 6 (eDNA) record describing the rich plant and animal assemblages of the Kap København Formation in North Greenland, dated to around two million years ago. The record shows an open boreal forest ecosystem with mixed vegetation of poplar, birch and thuja trees, as well as a variety of Arctic and boreal shrubs and herbs, many of which had not previously been detected at the site from macrofossil and pollen records. The DNA record confirms the presence of hare and mitochondrial DNA from animals including mastodons, reindeer, rodents and geese, all ancestral to their present-day and late Pleistocene relatives. The presence of marine species including horseshoe crab and green algae support a warmer climate than today. The reconstructed ecosystem has no modern analogue. The survival of such ancient eDNA probably relates to its binding to mineral surfaces. Our findings open new areas of genetic research, demonstrating that it is possible to track the ecology and evolution of biological communities from two million years ago using ancient eDNA. Analysis of two-million-year-old ancient environmental DNA from the Kap København Formation in North Greenland shows there was an open boreal forest with diverse plant and animal species, of which several taxa have not previously been detected at the site, representing an ecosystem that has no present-day analogue.

\"This volume commemorates the eclectic research of Douglas James Shearman into evaporites, which was initiated by his studies of the prograding UAE coastal sabkhas or salt flats that incorporate evaporite minerals which displace and replace earlier carbonate sediments. His subsequent proselytization of the study of ancient evaporites in sedimentary sections all over the world led to fundamental advances in our understanding of arid zone carbonate sedimentology. The papers presented here are based on presentations made in Abu Dhabi, UAE 12-14th October 2004 and 7th -8th November 2006. They provide a retrospective from the 1960's and 70's of Holocene evaporites and carbonates, recapturing Shearman's contribution by revisiting the Holocene coastal evaporite and carbonate sediments of the Arabian/Persian Gulf from Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and Oman. The first set of papers considers these sediments from the perspective of their coastal geomorphology, sedimentary character and their geochemistry. Later papers examine the significance of these settings in the ancient geological section world-wide, including examples from the Mesozoic-Cenozoic of the Moroccan Atlantic margin and the Upper Jurassic Arab Formation of the Arabian Gulf\"--

The \"Anthropocene Epoch\" has been proposed as a new post-Holocene geological time interval-a period characterized by the pervasive impact of human activities on the geological record. Prior to the influence of human technologies, the diversity and distribution of minerals at or near Earth's surface arose through physical, chemical, and/or biological processes. Since the advent of human mining and manufacturing, particularly since the industrial revolution of the mid-eighteenth century, mineral-like compounds have experienced a punctuation event in diversity and distribution owing to the pervasive impact of human activities. We catalog 208 mineral species approved by the International Mineralogical Association that occur principally or exclusively as a consequence of human processes. At least three types of human activities have affected the diversity and distribution of minerals and mineral-like compounds in ways that might be reflected in the worldwide stratigraphic record. The most obvious influence is the widespread occurrence of synthetic mineral-like compounds, some of which are manufactured directly for applications (e.g., YAG crystals for lasers; Portland cement) and others that arise indirectly (e.g., alteration of mine tunnel walls; weathering products of mine dumps and slag). A second human influence on the distribution of Earth's near-surface minerals relates to large-scale movements of rocks and sediments-sites where large volumes of rocks and minerals have been removed. Finally, humans have become relentlessly efficient in redistributing select natural minerals, such as gemstones and fine mineral specimens, across the globe. All three influences are likely to be preserved as distinctive stratigraphic markers far into the future.

We review the history of Quaternary pollen analysis from 1916 to the present-day, with particular emphasis on methodological and conceptual developments and on the early pioneers of the subject. The history is divided into three phases—the pioneer phase 1916–1950, the building phase 1951–1973, and the mature phase 1974–present-day. We also explore relevant studies prior to Lennart von Post’s seminal lecture in 1916 in Kristiania (Oslo) in an attempt to trace how the idea of Quaternary pollen analysis with quantitative pollen counting and stratigraphical pollen diagrams developed.

Regional subsurface mapping of glacial depositional systems preserved in buried bedrock paleovalleys, and quantitative analysis of new LiDAR imagery of surface glacial landforms using machine learning techniques, when combined, are powerful tools for assessing the dynamics of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) during the last (Wisconsinan) glaciation in southern Ontario. While age dating of deposits preserved below Last Glacial Maximum tills (LGM: marine isotope stage (MIS) 2 < c.24 000 years B.P. (ybp)) is still sparse, newly available sedimentological data derived by cored drilling, combined with legacy outcrop data, identify thick (100 m+) successions of glaciolacustrine sediments and a lack of till(s), indicating that the ice sheet margin did not extend beyond the Niagara Escarpment at the western end of Lake Ontario, during the earliest phases of the glaciation (MIS 4) or the ensuing mid-Wisconsinan (MIS 3). Ice was able to extend into New York State blocking the Rome outlet to the Hudson Valley ponding deep proglacial lakes in the glacio-isostatically depressed Huron-Ontario-Erie basins recorded by thick glaciolacustrine sediments in paleovalleys. These were cannibalized by an expanding Late Wisconsinan ice sheet after ~24 000 ybp recorded by extensive till sheets resting on a marked erosional unconformity, with drumlinized surfaces. Analysis and visualization of LiDAR data identifies discrete statistically validated flow sets of highly elongated streamlined bedforms (mega-scale glacial lineations (MSGLs)). These provide key evidence of a major reorganization of the ice sheet margin during deglaciation into lobate paleo ice streams shortly after 17 400 ybp. MSGLs are cut across earlier LGM drumlinized tills creating widespread \"palimpsest\" surfaces. At least two principal phases of fast ice flow can be identified, marked by large fluxes of sediment and the rapid building of large gravel and sand-dominated moraine complexes within interlobate depocentres, the largest glacial landforms in southern Ontario. Analysis of LiDAR data further reveals the common presence of DeGeer moraines where ice margins retreated in water, and iceberg scours. Future work using LiDAR mapping has the objective of fully documenting the number, extent, and timing of ice streams to enhance glaciological modelling when the ice sheet rapidly lost mass.

Late Quaternary Environments of the Soviet Union was first published in 1984. In the late 1970s American and Russian scientists met twice in conferences on Quaternary paleoclimates sponsored by the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Bilateral Agreement on the Environment. The conferees agreed to prepare volumes summarizing the current status of research in the two countries. Late Quaternary Environments of the Soviet Union provides the first comprehensive summary of modern research on virtually all aspects of the Late Quaternary environmental history in the Soviet Union. The Late Quaternary of the Soviet Union includes the last interglacial period - about 125,000 years of geologic time. The pronounced climatic changes of the Late Quaternary brought about not only fluctuations of ice sheets and mountain glaciers but also shifts in the levels of lakes and seas, in the extent of the permafrost and wind-borne deposits, in the distribution of environmentally sensitive plants and animals, and in the development of human cultures. These are some of the research areas covered in this book by Soviet specialists in the earth sciences, paleoecology, and paleoclimatology. Their 30 papers on Late Quaternary environmental history cover the vast territory from the Russian plain to the maritime region of the Soviet Far East, and from the Arctic coast to the Black Sea and the high mountains of Central Asia. Much of this research has been accomplished only within the last three decades, during the exploration and development of the natural resources of the country, especially in distant parts of Siberia. Because the Soviet Union occupies so much of Eurasia’s temperate zone, information on its environmental history not only greatly expands out geological and climatological knowledge of the world but also allows us to make enlightening comparisons with the history of the North American continent. Scientists in all branches of Quaternary studies will find this book a valuable source of data heretofore largely unavailable in the West. Its usefulness is further enhanced by an introduction that synthesizes the volume’s contents, prepared by the English-language editors. The companion volumes of the Late Quaternary in the United States are also published by the University of Minnesota Press.