Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic History of Latin American Vegetation and Terrestrial Environments (Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical) Illustrated Edition

This more recent companion to the author's 1999 North American work is simply indispensable for anyone working on climate change, paleovegetation and paleoclimatic reconstruction anywhere from Mexico to Fuegia and Magellanic Patagonia. The literature is huge, constantly growing, and hard to keep track of. Having this as a key to the literature up to 2009 makes life much easier even for those who have been immersed in the subject well before that. Being able to cross-correlate the tropical and temperate records has always been a huge challenge. The world's longest and most continuous palynological records are from the Andes; the most controversial Quaternary scenarios are in Amazonia; for several decades the gap between them appeared unbridgeable. No more (sort of...)!

This is a comprehensive and detailed work on the geological, palynological, and fossil data available for this large and biologically rich region. The book proceeds through chapters dedicated to description of current vegetation and geological history, then proceeds to an exhaustive list of fossils and palynological time series, and completes with an in-depth interpretation of the previously described evidence, and a discussion of the current state of knowledge about the historical vegetation of the region. Subsections in the chapters are organized by geopolitical and ecological regions. The book is information-dense but very readable, and the bibliographies alone are worth the list price for anyone with a serious interest in the botanical ecology and natural history of the New World. Highly recommended for botanists, ecologists, or interested readers.