How does life originate, proliferate, and dissipate?
We use the microfossil record to study the link between environmental change and evolutionary processes. This helps us understand the ways in which environmental change shapes the formation of new species, origination and extinction.
We study foraminifera, nannofossils, ostracods, palynomorphs and silicofossils to provide evidence of organismal responses to mass extinction events.
Key research questions
- Can ecological function help reboot Earth system processes in the aftermath of massive biodiversity loss?
- How does environmental change set the limits to life on Earth?
- Can morphology reveal how climate amplifies or dampen the impacts of abrupt, transitional and ongoing climatic perturbations to species’ distributions?
- To what extent does improved regional sampling strengthen or challenge hypotheses of the origination of marine vertebrates?
- Does developmental plasticity inhibit or facilitate speciation?
Methods
We put together transdisciplinary research teams that combine computer vision, Earth system modelling, geochemistry, phylogenetic comparative methods, micro-tomography, stratigraphy and systematics.
We build the largest empirical datasets of their type. We couple these with novel environmental reconstructions. We develop analytical tools and integrated modelling approaches to shed light on the regulators of biodiversity.