ИСТИНА

Due to recent advances paleopedology is absorbing many branches in soil science and other geosciences. Modern soilscape is one of innumerable temporal cuts in the evolution of pedosphere from Precambrian to Holocene. The role of paleosols in the evolution of bio-geosphere cycles is based on the fact that more than 90% of all living organisms occur in soils. Biogeochemical record extends far beyond the existing definition of paleosol and includes, following Vernadski, all products influenced by terrestrial biota that constitute pedolithosphere (after Glazovskaya: terrestial sedimentary rocks, weathering crusts, etc., being paleosols, transformed in geo-cycles). Actually paleopedology is a science studying pedolithospheres of the past. With this approach we have continuous record in which newly discovered paleosols are enclosed like new cells in the periodic table. Paleosols determine biosphere-geosphere cycles from their origin. Wherever we record habitants (traces of life) we trace habitation (paleosols). Evolution of soils and biota may be understood as an evolution of ecosystems, that is a new paradigm for geosciences (Zavarzin, 1995). Co-evolution of life and soils is a large-scale biogeochemical succession with an increased role of biological cycles in a geological cycle. Paleosols record a broad number of parameters (qualitative and increasing number of quantitative) and environmental links of former ecosystems, even if bio fossils are extinct. Co-evolution is especially obvious for revolutionary changes in weathering, like oxygenation of the atmosphere, radiation of higher plants and grasses. Paleosols comprise the major record in Quaternary terrestrial archives and are in the center of such multidisciplinary challenges like global climate change, carbon sequestration and cryobiosphere. Considerable part of present-day pedosphere consists of surface paleosols with their profiles keeping record of final stages of sedimentation and former environments.