8th Colloquium on Acarology

Abstract

This issue of SOIL ORGANISMS is dedicated to the 8th Colloquium on Acarology, which took place in September 2011 in Tuebingen, the geographic center of Baden-Wuerttemberg. The location of the meeting was the institute of geological science. All coffee-breaks and the poster presentation took place in the Therapsid Hall, which is part of the paleontological collection of the University of Tuebingen. This collection was established in the early 18th century and offers outstanding finds from Baden-Wuerttemberg, such as a group of skeletons of the Swabian dinosaur Plateosaurus. The Therapsid Hall shows parts of the most important and one of the largest collections of these extinct animals from the late Paleozoic, which exhibits some evolutionary adaptations considered today as typically mammalian: the shape of the extremity bones, specialized teeth and even the presence of a pelt.