International audienceThe Early Toarcian is marked by a global perturbation of the carbon cycle and major marine biological changes. These coincide with a general decrease in calcium carbonate production and an increase in organic carbon burial, and culminate in the so-called Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event. It is believed that the environmental crisis was triggered by the activity of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous province. In order to further document the Early Toarcian palaeoenvironmental perturbations, carbon isotope, total organic matter, calcareous nannofossils and phosphorus content of the Amellago section in the High Atlas rift basin of Morocco were investigated. This section is extremely expanded compared to the well-studied European sections. Its position along the northern margin of the Gondwana continent is of critical importance because it enables an assessment of changes of river nutrient input into the western Tethyan realm. The carbon isotope curve shows two negative excursions of equal thickness and amplitude, at the Pliensbachian-Toarcian boundary and at the transition from the Polymorphum to the Levisoni Zone. This confirms the supra-regional nature of these shifts and highlights the possible condensation of the first "boundary" shift in European sections. Phosphorus content is used to trace palaeo-nutrient changes and shows that the two negative carbon isotope shifts are associated with increased nutrient levels, confirming that these episodes are related to enhanced continental weathering, probably due to elevated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In the High Atlas Basin, the increase in nutrient levels at the Pliensbachian-Toarcian boundary is moreover likely to be the main factor responsible for the coeval demise of the Saharan carbonate platform. A middle Toarcian event, centered on the boundary between the Bifrons and Gradata Zones, characterized by a positive carbon isotope excursion and nutrient level rise, is documented in the Amellago section

Summary: JSBML, the official pure Java programming library for the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) format, has evolved with the advent of different modeling formalisms in systems biology and their ability to be exchanged and represented via extensions of SBML. JSBML has matured into a major, active open-source project with contributions from a growing, international team of developers who not only maintain compatibility with SBML, but also drive steady improvements to the Java interface and promote ease-of-use with end users.Availability and implementation: Source code, binaries and documentation for JSBML can be freely obtained under the terms of the LGPL 2.1 from the website http://sbml.org/Software/JSBML. More information about JSBML can be found in the user guide at http://sbml.org/Software/JSBML/docs/.Contact: jsbml-development@googlegroups.com or andraeger@eng.ucsd.eduSupplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The early Toarcian is characterized by the occurrence of widespread black shale deposits, recorded extensively across Europe and interpreted to be related to an Oceanic Anoxic Event. In order to investigate the source‐rock potential of lower Toarcian deposits in Morocco, detailed sedimentary logging accompanied by outcrop spectral gamma‐ray measurements were carried out on four sections representative of different palaeo‐depositional settings in the Central High Atlas. Authigenic uranium enrichment is used as a proxy for oxygen‐depleted depositional conditions, and may thus indicate potential organic‐rich lithologies. Of the four measured sections, only one (the Amellago section, which represents the deepest marine setting) shows relative authigenic uranium enrichment. Complementary TOC analyses (with maximum values of 3.24%) over this interval confirm an associated enrichment trend in organic matter. The organic matter recovered from the outcrop samples is however highly oxidised, and thus the absolute value is not regarded as being a true record of the rocks' organic content. It is concluded from this study that early Toarcian potential source rocks were deposited within restricted sub‐basins in the Central High Atlas. It is therefore possible that organic‐rich deposits of Toarcian age are present in similar palaeogeographic settings in other areas of Morocco. This increases the exploration potential of Moroccan basins in which Jurassic deposits are potential source rocks.