Stellar yields and chemical evolution: The solar neighborhood as a calibrator

Uncertainties in stellar nucleosynthesis and their impact on models of chemical evolution are discussed. Comparing the Type II supernova nucleosynthesis prescriptions from Woosley & Weaver (1995) and Thielemann, Nomoto, & Hashimoto (1996), it turns out that the latter predict higher Mg/Fe ratios that are more favorable in reproducing the observed abundance features of the Milky Way. Provided that chemical evolution models are calibrated on the solar neighborhood, they offer a powerful tool to constrain structure formation. In particular, galaxy formation models that yield star formation histories significantly longer than 1 Gyr fail to reproduce the super-solar Mg/Fe ratios observed in elliptical galaxies