Convener: Martin Keller
Session language: English

Topic:
Earth history, about 4.5 billion years long, saw many drastical changes in the forces and factors that control earth surface processes. The establishment of an oxic atmosphere, the different steps in the evolution of life, periods of extreme glaciations, and episodes of tremendous volcanism are just but a few of these events. The interactions between these factors apparently created sedimentological, biological, and geochemical environments that have no known recent correlatives. All relevant processes and their interactions  that may have triggered the evolution of such non-actualistic environments will be discussed in this session.