RESEARCH INTERESTS

I investigate environmental changes in the geologic past and the extent to which they have affected evolution and paleobiogeography, including changes in evolutionary rates, communities, and organismal morphology. The originations and extinctions of fossil taxa and their ecology/paleoecology are used to identify evolutionary, paleoceanographic, paleoclimatic and tectonic trends through time. Current research projects are listed below.

 

PANAMA PALEONTOLOGY PROJECT, the web site for a large, multinational research project

NEOGENE EVOLUTION OF TROPICAL AMERICAN BENTHIC FORAMINIFERA

The Neogene emergence of the Isthmus of Panama separated tropical Eastern Pacific and Western Atlantic waters and biotas. Fieldwork in Central America and South America is establishing a stratigraphic and paleoenvironmental framework to assess the biogeographic and evolutionary changes in tropical American Neogene benthic foraminifera.

UPLIFT OF THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA

I am using the paleoecology and stable isotopes of foraminifera to identify evolutionary shallow-water and deep-water paleoceanographic and tectonic changes associated with the early Miocene to early Pliocene emergence of the Isthmus of Panama. 

SEAGRASS HISTORY OF FLORIDA BAY

This is an investigation of the amount of variation in coastal environmental conditions that is naturally occurring. The approach is to reconstruct the historical record of seagrass abundance, which is highly correlated with environmental water quality. The study is set in Florida Bay, part of the environmentally challenged Everglades National Park. The primary objective is to collect cores of Florida Bay sediment and use proxies of seagrass abundance contained in the sediment as indicators of the environmental water quality of the past few hundred years. My students and I are studying seagrass-associated foraminifera, and will combine our results with those of experts in sedimentology, geochronology, geochemistry and diatoms.

RESEARCH IN THE FIELD, pictures from Central America, South America and South Florida

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