Modern sea-level and climate changes have a strong potential to shift biological communities into novel states that have not present-day analogues, leaving ecologists with no observation basis to predict the likely biotic effects. The fossil record can offer examples of long-term biotic responses to past environmental changes, if portrayed in an appropriate time environmental framework.
Objectives
Project MAREST will use an integrated field-based and analytical approach that combines sequence stratigraphy and palaeoecology – the core disciplines of Stratigraphic Palaeobiology - and geochemical analytical methods, to answer the following questions:
(i) How do marine benthic communities respond to cyclic sea level changes?
(ii) Do communities continuously change through time or alternate intervals of stasis and turnover?
(iii) What is the relationship between the stratigraphic architecture and environmental perturbations that cause turnover?
Whereas similar questions have been addressed for Palaeozoic and Caenozoic fauna, no attempt exists for the Mesozoic, a fundamental period in the history of life.
Study area
The project will focus on the Middle-Upper Jurassic of the Western Interior of Wyoming (USA), where macro-invertebrate rich, onshore-offshore stratigraphic sections, can be followed between and within third (1-10my) and second order (100ky-1my) depositional sequences and parasequences (10-100ky).
Funds
Project MAREST is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme as an International Outgoing Fellowships for career development to a consortium to a consortium that includes the Center for Research in Earth Sciences, Plymouth University, UK and the Department of Geology, University of Georgia, USA.
Time span
This is a 3 years project (January 2015-December 2017) and it will be carried out by the researcher in charge, Silvia Danise, for 2 years at the University of Georgia and for 1 year at Plymouth University.
Objectives
Project MAREST will use an integrated field-based and analytical approach that combines sequence stratigraphy and palaeoecology – the core disciplines of Stratigraphic Palaeobiology - and geochemical analytical methods, to answer the following questions:
(i) How do marine benthic communities respond to cyclic sea level changes?
(ii) Do communities continuously change through time or alternate intervals of stasis and turnover?
(iii) What is the relationship between the stratigraphic architecture and environmental perturbations that cause turnover?
Whereas similar questions have been addressed for Palaeozoic and Caenozoic fauna, no attempt exists for the Mesozoic, a fundamental period in the history of life.
Study area
The project will focus on the Middle-Upper Jurassic of the Western Interior of Wyoming (USA), where macro-invertebrate rich, onshore-offshore stratigraphic sections, can be followed between and within third (1-10my) and second order (100ky-1my) depositional sequences and parasequences (10-100ky).
Funds
Project MAREST is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme as an International Outgoing Fellowships for career development to a consortium to a consortium that includes the Center for Research in Earth Sciences, Plymouth University, UK and the Department of Geology, University of Georgia, USA.
Time span
This is a 3 years project (January 2015-December 2017) and it will be carried out by the researcher in charge, Silvia Danise, for 2 years at the University of Georgia and for 1 year at Plymouth University.