Fossil Prokaryotes and Protists - Softcover

This reference to fossil unicellular systems is a companion volume to Boardman's "Fossil Prokaryotes" which covers multi-cellular organisms. The first four chapters cover general aspects of fossil unicellular organisms including the origins of life, problems peculiar to single-cell fossils, applications to geological problems, the evolutionary history of prokaryotes and protists and their role in influencing earth history. The remanining chapters each describe, in detail, a major group of unicellular organisms. Chapters adopt a uniform structure giving history of study, morphology and systematics, biology, paleobiology, biostratigraphy, evolutionary history and supplementary reading.