Collaborative Research: Paleoenvironmental and paleoecological responses to climate change in the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum

Scientific evidence shows that Earth’s climate is rapidly changing. Understanding how ecosystems respond to climate change will provide critical information to help human populations adjust to these changes. This study will examine how ancient mammal communities responded to an episode of global warming about fifty-three million years ago.

Data about diet, locomotor activity, and body size will be gathered from fossils in U.S. museums to reconstruct the ecosystems in which these mammals lived. Chemical signatures from fossil teeth will be used to interpret ancient environments. Assessing how these communities responded to habitat change through this interval of warming climate will provide useful data for understanding how modern ecosystems may respond to future warming.

This project will include collaboration with communities that have been historically underrepresented in the sciences by providing sets of books about climate change and the fossil record to libraries in Native American and rural communities. The project also includes development of a year-long course for underserved high school students and professional development for New York City public school teachers.

This research will focus on warming at the onset of the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum when average temperatures increased by about 5°C over an interval of 200,000 to 300,000-years. Paleoenvironments will be reconstructed by developing a model using stable carbon isotopes in mammal teeth. Paleoecological interpretations will be made with morphometric analyses based in part on digitized scans of bones and teeth.

Fossils will be sourced from two Wyoming basins (Wind River and Bighorn) to test for geographic differences in paleoecology and paleoenvironments. Changes in paleoecology and mammalian community structure will be analyzed with quantitative methods, and compared to ecological changes during an earlier interval of warming climate at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary.

This will provide a test of whether mammalian response to climate occurred in a consistent, repeatable fashion. Project outreach includes collaborations with libraries in Tribal and rural communities, providing books and materials on climate change. It also includes a course for urban high school students and professional development for science teachers.

All outreach components are based on research on effective practices, and incorporate formative evaluative feedback.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.