Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book represents the first attempt to coordinate the substantial database on biological markers which organic geochemists have accumulated, thus providing a comprehensive reference base. This monograph is arranged in chapters which are complete in themselves and exemplify both the range of molecules which can be encompassed as biological markers, and the varied environments in which they have been found. The chapters cover not only the question of which organic molecules qualify as biological markers, but discuss degradative pathways which when recognized and understood can extend the marker concept, and also say something specifically about environments of deposition. Some molecules currently identified as geolipids are not yet firmly related to their likely biological source. Here is the moving boundary of knowledge and the monograph carries the reader to this frontier and points the way forward where this can be done. Although petroleum exploration laboratories have developed their own databases over the years, this book is one of the first works of reference on the application of the technique to exploration data.