580 California St., Suite 400
San Francisco, CA, 94104
Key research themes
1. How can paleogeographical reconstructions be improved by integrating plate tectonics, fossil records, and paleobiology data?
This research theme focuses on refining the accuracy and consistency of paleogeographic maps by combining plate tectonic reconstructions with marine fossil data and paleobiological indicators. The integration helps resolve discrepancies between inferred paleoenvironments and published maps, yielding more reliable depictions of continent-ocean distributions through geological time. Improved paleogeographies are crucial for understanding Earth's tectonic evolution, paleoclimate modeling, raw material exploration, and biogeographical history.
Key finding: Developed a novel workflow to restore global paleogeographic maps to present-day coordinates, enabling their integration with alternative tectonic plate motion models, and used marine fossil collections from the Paleobiology... Read more
Key finding: Provided a comprehensive analysis of the latitudinal distributions of climate-sensitive lithologies (coals, evaporites, glacial deposits) from the Devonian to Miocene, correcting for continental area bias and sampling effort... Read more
Key finding: Synthesized the evolution of paleogeography from early observations of fossil distributions and climate signals to modern plate tectonic-based reconstructions. Emphasized how paleomagnetic data, ocean-floor magnetic... Read more
2. What are the drivers and patterns of long-term biodiversity and biogeographic changes in relation to paleoclimate and paleogeography?
This theme explores how climatic variability, paleotemperature fluctuations, and paleogeographic evolution have shaped species diversification, distribution shifts, and extinction patterns over geological timescales. Investigations integrate fossil data, phylogenetic approaches, and climatic proxies to unravel the timing and mechanisms behind biodiversity hotspots, adaptations, and range contractions, emphasizing the interplay of environment, evolutionary dynamics, and geological processes.
Key finding: Analyzed 150 phylogenies encompassing 12,512 Neotropical seed plant and tetrapod species, revealing predominant patterns of diversity expansion (70%) but also significant cases of saturated (21%) and declining diversity (9%)... Read more
Key finding: Compiled a quantitative paleotemperature model over the last 540 million years by integrating oxygen isotope-derived temperatures with lithologic climate indicators and paleoclimatic events, subdividing Earth's climate... Read more
Key finding: By combining ecological niche modeling, paleoclimate models, and fossil data spanning ~56 million years, this study demonstrated that many 'tropical-restricted' avian clades once had stem-lineage fossils in northern... Read more
Key finding: Proposed a model of alternating high and low climate variability stages in tropical East Africa over the past 5 million years, predicting repeated environmental instability linked with hominin evolutionary innovations via... Read more
3. How can phylogenetic and morphological data elucidate evolutionary processes such as morphological stasis, character integration, and lineage diversification in deep time?
This research area addresses the usage of phylogenetic frameworks combined with fossil and morphological datasets to understand macroevolutionary patterns like long-term morphological stasis, correlated character evolution, and rates of speciation. By integrating tree-thinking with paleoecological and morphological methodologies, researchers reveal how evolutionary heritage varies across habitats, taxa, and geological epochs, and how character evolution modes affect phylogenetic inference and biodiversity dynamics.
Key finding: Investigated stratigraphic compatibility of character state pairs across 259 metazoan clades to assess rate heterogeneities and correlated character changes. Demonstrated that while 95% of compatible character pairs are... Read more
Key finding: Using the Netherlands’ vegetation-plot database and a detailed angiosperm phylogeny, the study showed species pools of different habitat types contain disproportionate representation of lineages from specific geological... Read more
Key finding: Analyzed the Stygocapitella cryptic species complex combining phylogenetics and morphology, revealing significantly slower morphological evolution rates relative to close relatives despite deep divergence times up to ~275... Read more
Key finding: Outlined the framework of phylogenetic paleoecology, integrating phylogenetic hypotheses with paleoecological data to resolve ecological and evolutionary questions in deep time. Emphasized combining ecological traits, fossil... Read more