In modern geochronology - timescale-building and making correlations between oceans, continents and hemispheres - the microfossil record of speciations and extinctions is integrated with numerical dates from radioactive decay, geomagnetic reversals through time, and the cyclical wobbles of the earth-sun-moon system. This important synthesis follows the development of biostratigraphy from classical origins into petroleum exploration and deep-ocean drilling. It explores the three-way relationship between species of microorganism, their environment and their evolution through time as expressed in skeletons preserved as fossils.
Re-issue, originally published in hardcover in 2005.