Abstract
Animals and plants are highly dependent on their immediate environment to satisfy their vital needs for feeding and reproduction. Within populations, natural selection favours the forms best adapted to the physicochemical and biological conditions which dominate their environment. Thus recognition of the adaptive characters of fossil organisms and an understanding of their significance forms an important part of the reconstruction of fossil environments. This is the aim of functional morphology. Broadly, the function of various structures can be reconstructed from the morphology of the hard parts preserved by fossilisation.
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© 1983 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Gall, JC. (1983). Modes of Life. In: Ancient Sedimentary Environments and the Habitats of Living Organisms. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68909-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68909-3_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-68911-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-68909-3
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