The study of Paleobiology is an exciting field that takes our scientists to areas all over the world. We answer questions that help us understand earth processes, evolution, past global climate change and much more. Read on to learn about some of the research that staff and research associates in our Department are doing. Further details of their research can be found on the staff pages (to which their names are linked).

Programs:

Individuals:

Kay Behrensmeyer is working on paleoecological changes in African and south Asian Cenozoic mammals in response to climate change. She is doing field work in Kenya and Pakistan documenting environmental change and linking this to ecological and evolutionary changes in faunas that include early humans. She is also studying taphonomic biases in the fossil record that affect the patterns of faunal change through time or from region to region.

Michael Brett-Surman explores and excavates Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous dinosaur sites from The Big Horn Basin near Shell, Wyoming. This is part of a larger study on Ornithopod (two-legged plant eating) dinosaurs.

Martin Buzas seeks to quantiatively understand the distribution of organisms in large and small amounts of space and time. To do so, he uses mathematics and statistics extensively. He collects samples from Florida.

Matthew Carrano studies dinosaur phylogeny, evolution, ecology, and functional morphology. His fieldwork takes him to the Western Interior of North America and Madagascar in search of new dinosaurs and new Mesozoic paleocommunities. He is also studying the dinosaur fossil record, and is particularly interested in developing better samples of dinosaurs from underrepresented regions and time periods. For phylogenetic and functional studies, his research has taken him to museum collections around the world, including England, France, Germany, Belgium, Argentina, Canada, and South Africa.

Bill DiMichele studies fossil plants of the Late Paleozoic. Emphasis is on ecology and ecosystem organization and the relationship of these to evolution. His focus is the study of the long-term dynamics of ecosystems, especially in response to changing climate - the Late Paleozoic transition from a cold to a warm Earth. Field work is concentrated in the United States, particularly the midwest (Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Kansas and Oklahoma) and southwest (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah).

J. Thomas Dutro, Jr.'s main research interest is brachiopods, and he informally oversees the museums world-class collection of these fossils. Retired from the U.S. Geological Survey, Tom volunteers help for that organization, and for other scientists, using fossils (brachiopods in particular) to help solve geological and biological problems. He is a Research Associate in the Department. Within the past five years, his research activities have involved paleobiogeographic syntheses using large early Carboniferous productoids from the tectonic fragments in western North America; study of Permian brachiopod faunas from northern Alaska; and biostratigraphic syntheses of tectonic basins in east Asia, including 11 countries extending from Japan and Korea on the north to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea on the south. Earlier work in the 90s involved regional geologic studies in northeast Washington, West Virginia, the Ozarks region of Missouri and Arkansas, and an analysis of Carboniferous brachiopods from northern Chile, northwest Argentina and Peru.

Douglas Erwin's research focuses on major evolutionary transitions in the history of life, particularly the explosion of animals during the Cambrian Period, about 540 million years ago, and the causes and consequences of the great End-Permian mass extinction 251 million years ago. Ongoing research on the Cambrian radiation involves field work in south China, Namibia and Russia and emphasizes understanding the timing of the diversification and the role of ecology in evolutionary radiations. Other studies involve an integration of comparative developmental biology with the fossil record to understand how the evolution of developmental processes contributed to the early radiation of animals.

Other projects involve the evolutionary history of Paleozoic (543-251 million years ago) snails and the paleoecology of the Permian Basin in west Texas. Dr. Erwin's research has been funded by NSF, NASA and he is a part-time resident faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute, and chair of their Science Steering Committee. He is currently president-elect of the Paleontological Society.

Brian Huber is a Curator of Planktonic Foraminifera. He studies Cretaceous and Paleogene paleoclimate and paleoceanography; evolutionary dynamics and extinction of Cretaceous and Paleogene planktic foraminifera; characterization and causes of mid-Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Events. His fieldwork has taken him to Alaska, Spain, Antarctica, Chile, Argentina, Tanzania and an Ocean Drilling Program cruise off the coast of Florida.

Gene Hunt studies phenotypic evolution in ostracodes, especially those from the deep sea. In addition to specimen-based work, he also develops statistical approaches testing and exploring ecological and evolutionary patterns in the fossil record.

Thomas Jorstad is a Research Assistant for the Deltas-Global Change Program. His area of expertise is GPS mapping and geoarchaeology.

Conrad Labandeira examines the biology of plant-insect associations in the fossil record, from the Devonian to the Eocene. Conrad’s work in the Early and Middle Devonian of Quebec, Canada, charts the early history of plant-arthropod associations in early terrestrial ecosystems. He has examined plant damage and arthropod fecal pellets in exquisitely preserved Late Carboniferous coal-ball deposits in several basins of the eastern United States. His study in north-central Texas has focused on the spread of insect herbivory in Early Permian floras across river-dominated landscapes. From an examination of fossil floras in South Africa, he has recorded the extinction of many associations at the end-Permian and a subsequent, more diverse radiation during the Late Triassic. Projects in the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous of China have analyzed mouthpart structures of fluid-feeding insects and their interaction with gymnosperms. His work in various Late Cretaceous and Paleogene basins of the Western Interior of the United States has documented the role that the K-T boundary had on plant-insect associations, and the subsequent rebound of similar associations during the Paleogene. Additionally, these patterns have been contrasted to analogous Paleogene patterns of insect-mediated damage in southern Patagonia of Argentina.

Ian Macintyre, in collaboration with scientists inside and outside of Smithsonian, participates in the following projects:
1) With cores drilled across the Holandes algal ridge in Panama, they have discovered that this is in fact a storm ridge formed 3,000 to 2,000 years ago;
2) Continues collecting push-cores to study the recent (last 3,000 years) history of lagoon reefs in Belize and Panama. In Belize they have documented dramatic changes in coral communities related to both White-band Disease and to Bleaching ... changes that have not occurred in the last 3,000 years and could be related to effects of human activities.
3) Continues to study the skeletal mineralogy of modern octocorals. They have found that the holdfasts and axes contain, aragonite, Mg calcite, and carbonate hydroxylapatite. The latter is rarely found in modern invertebrates and is only found in one family of octocorals. It could be a relic of an earlier fossil record of more abundant carbonate apatite in skeletons of invertebrates.
4) Detailed petrographic studies of the origin of bands in stromatolites from the Exumas, Bahamas and from Shark Bay, Australia. One very dominant band is formed by an endolithic cyanobacteria Solentia which fills its borings with carbonate as it bores grains. These grains are commonly welded together to form indurated bands when infilled borings cross from one grain to another at points of contacts.
5) A study of the mineralogy of ocher found on bones from a Clovis site in Montana.
6) A study of a relict Holocene reef exposed by a submarine grounding off the southeast coast of Florida.

Bob Neuman (Adjunct Scientist) persuaded Canadian authorities to pursue the paleontological clues revealed by the brachiopods discovered by W.H. Poole (Geological Survey, Canada) on Turnbull Mountain, New Brunswick. (See Poole & Neuman, 2002, Atlantic Geology, V.38, pp.109-134.) Bob persuaded the Survey to supplement their original collections by excavating the site further, and to enlist Professor Jisuo Jin of the University of Western Ontario, to analyze the newly obtained specimens. Professor Jin is encouraged by the large number of impressions of shells in the weathered rocks that were visible during the excavation.

Robert Purdy works on the taxonomy, evolution, and paleoecology of fossil mackerel sharks, which includes white sharks and makos. Special interest is given to the development of teeth and the range of variation in their morphology in living species and how that applies to the study of fossil shark teeth. Because shark teeth do vary widely in form, the teeth of different species can have similar morphologies. Are these similarities in form due to convergent evolution or ancestral-descendent relationships? In the study of fossil shark teeth this question has not been rigorously studied. His research includes also the study of the anatomy, behavior, and distribution of Recent sharks and the completeness of the marine fossil record and the distribution of sharks in it. His field work has taken him to important fossil localities in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Daniel Stanley studies modern deltas located at the mouth of rivers in different world oceans; these include the Nile in Egypt, Ganges in India, Yangtze in China, Rhone in France, and others. The focus of the multi-disciplinary and multi-national program is to resolve problems of sea-level rise and land-subsidence and their effects on these vulnerable, low-lying environments. Special attention is being paid to early archaeological sites on modern deltas, and Stanley has recently participated in expeditions that have discovered lost cities such as Menouthis and Canopus off the coast of Egypt.

Tom Waller Why would one devote a career to understanding the evolutionary history of bivalved mollusks (clams, scallops, oysters)? Because they have an incredibly long fossil record extending over 500 million years, and they were witnesses to major Earth events, including extinction-causing impacts, the breaking-apart and reassembly of continents, and major changes in the oceans. Dr. Waller is examining this history by studying the shape and structure of bivalve shells and how species are related to one another. His field studies of fossils have ranged from Venezuela to Vanuatu, and his studies of living bivalves from western Nevada preserved in rocks that are now at an elevation of 7,000 feet. They are providing a rare glimpse at the composition of marine life on the western shore of Pangaea, a supercontinent that was rifted apart and eventually became the continents that we know today.

Scott Wing uses fossils to understand how climate has changed in the past, and how terrestrial ecosystems have evolved in the face of environmental change. One of his main interests has been a period of globally warm climate between 50 and 60 million years ago. He has used fossil plants to make quantitative estimates of climate during this period.