Sites of Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century

The three articles in this special issue of Ambix were among the twenty-one papers presented at the conference “Sites of Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century,” held in Valencia at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Science ‘López Piñero’ in July 2012. This meeting was the second of the series of conferences organised as part of the project Sites of Chemistry, 1600–2000, the aim of which was to investigate the wide and diverse range of physical spaces and places where chemistry has been practised from the early modern period to the twentieth century.

Brachiopod assemblages from the Early-Middle Jurassic transition in the Eastern Subbetic (SE Spain): Systematic and palaeobiogeographic implications and palaeoenvironmental significance

New data on brachiopod assemblages recorded in the Eastern Subbetic area (Alicante, SE Spain) and attributed to the Early Bajocian (Humphriesianum Zone and/or immediately older) are provided. Eleven species have been distinguished and reported for the first time in the Subbetic domain of the Betic Cordillera. The description of the morphological evidences on each analysed taxa, especially in relation to their internal morphology, brings new implications in the systematics of the Middle Jurassic brachiopods. The analysis of faunistic affinity between the recorded assemblages and those from other palaeogeographic domains, shows that the Subbetic brachiopod fauna has a clear Mediterranean affinity, as proved by the different species belonging to the genera Striirhynchia, Septocrurella, Mondegia?, Karadagithyris, Linguithyris, Papodina?, Viallithyris?, and Zugmayeria?. It is also evidenced that the Early-Middle Jurassic transition in the Eastern Subbetic accounted, in qualitative terms, a remarkable interval of faunistic renewal in the brachiopod assemblages, strongly influenced by a complex tectonic and stratigraphic framework controlled by a period of intense extensional tectonics, globally framed in the evolution of the Atlantic Ocean.