deposits of oil and gas. Drilling cuts, cores, and/or outcrop materials are preserved for their pore-fluids, and the chemistry of the fluid is analyzed with Fluid Inclusion Stratigraphy (FIS). FIS analysis takes the spectrometric reading of a fluid inclusion's volatile species; these are indicative of a natural gas or oil deposit nearby. The abundance of similar fluid inclusions could, however, be attributed to hydrocarbon migration and accumulation, so other techniques are used to confirm the presence of the oil deposit after initial detection of fluid inclusions. Metamorphic signatures In the recent years, fluid inclusion research has been extensively applied to understand the role of fluids in the deep crust and crust-mantle interface. Fluid inclusions trapped within granulite facies rocks have provided important clues on the petrogenesis of dry granulite facies rocks through the influx of CO2-rich fluids from sub-lithospheric sources. CO2-rich fluid inclusions were also recorded from a number of ultra high temperature granulite facies terranes, suggesting the involvement of CO2 in extreme crustal metamorphism. Some recent studies speculate that CO2 derived by sub-solidus decarbonation reactions during extreme metamorphism has contributed to the deglaciation of the snowball Earth. Orogenic application Fluid inclusions trapped in veins and minerals have been used as a proxy to explore the deformation history in orogenic belts. As fluid activities are considerably more in shear zones in an orogenic belt, the fluid inclusions in a shear zone have been also used to explore the seismic activities during the evolution of the shear zone. In orogenic belts the earthquakes sometimes attributed to be linked with fluid activity at depth. Indirect geophysical evidence points out the role of fluid in earthquakes in many shear zones, however a few studies provide geological evidence for the role of fluid in earthquakes. Paleoclimate applications Trapped bubbles of air and water within fossil amber can be analyzed to provide direct evidence of the climate conditions existing when the resin or tree sap formed. The analysis of these trapped air bubbles provides a record of atmosphere composition going back 140 million years. The data indicate that the oxygen content of the atmosphere reached a high of nearly 35% during the Cretaceous Period and then plummeted to near present levels during the early Tertiary. The abrupt decline corresponds to or closely follows the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event and may be the result of a major meteorite impact that created the Chicxulub Crater. In paleoceanography studies,