Tracing the Mass-Assembly History of Galaxies with Deep Surveys
  We use the optical and near-infrared galaxy samples from the Munich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS), the FORS Deep Field (FDF) and GOODS-S to probe the stellar mass assembly history of field galaxies out to z ~ 5. Combining information on the galaxies' stellar mass with their star-formation rate and the age of the stellar population, we can draw important conclusions on the assembly of the most massive galaxies in the universe: These objects contain the oldest stellar populations at all redshifts probed. Furthermore, we show that with increasing redshift the contribution of star-formation to the mass assembly for massive galaxies increases dramatically, reaching the era of their formation at z ~ 2 and beyond. These findings can be interpreted as evidence for an early epoch of star formation in the most massive galaxies in the universe. 
Georg Feulner (1,2), Armin Gabasch (1,2), Yuliana Goranova (1,2),   Ulrich Hopp (1,2), Ralf Bender (1,2) ((1) Universitaets-...