Paleobiology Commons^™

Using X-Ray Fluorescence To Analyze Fire Impacted Soil And Vegetation Composition, Dylan Darter

Kansas State University Undergraduate Research Conference

In our lab, I am using an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to measure the concentrations of metals in sediments from subalpine lakes. Our goal is to measure the biogeochemical consequences of wildfires over the last 2000 years. This study looks at the elemental composition of different lake cores, and vegetation samples from areas of the “Big Burn” fire of 1910. This fire burned across several states in the Rocky Mountain region. With our XRF data we are able to see how the fire impacted the soils and how long after the fire proper soil composition can occur. This study can be …

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Bulletin of the University of Nebraska State Museum

No abstract provided.

A Description Of A Population Of Rugose Horn Corals In The Whitewater Formation (Richmondian, Ordovician) Camden, Oh, Campbell F. Bortel

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

The Whitewater Formation, part of the upper Ordovician period, is predominately a fossiliferous wavy limestone unit interbedded with fossiliferous shales (State of Ohio, 2012). These shales contain a variety of marine invertebrates including various species of brachiopods, bryozoans, trilobites and an abundance of rugose horn corals. The purpose of this project was to collect and describe a population of rugose corals from several outcrops exposed in Camden, OH. These outcrops are exposed along OH-127 and OH-725 as road cuts. Over 500 corals were collected, sorted for complete specimens, and numerically categorized into a dataset. Each coral was linked to its …

Using Ct Scans To Describe An Allosaurus Skull (Dinosauria: Theropoda), Jordan C. Oldham

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

In 2001, an Allosaurus skull (CMP 279) was discovered in the Skull Creek Basin in Moffat County, Colorado. The skull is one of the most complete for the species and even contains the hyoid bones, which are usually not present. The skull is now permanently mounted, for display purposes, thus making the study of the individual bones difficult for producing a paleo-anatomical description. Computed Tomography (CT) scans of CMP 279 were created in 2017 and then made available for this study in 2019. CT scans are being used to investigate internal anatomy of skulls such as the endocranial cavity, sinuses, …

The Accelerating Influence Of Humans On Mammalian Macroecological Patterns Over The Late Quaternary, Felisa A. Smith, Rosemary E. Elliott Smith, S. Kathleen Lyons, Jonathan L. Payne, Amelia Villaseñor

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The transition of hominins to a largely meat-based diet ~1.8 million years ago led to the exploitation of other mammals for food and resources. As hominins, particularly archaic and modern humans, became increasingly abundant and dispersed across the globe, a temporally and spatially transgressive extinction of large-bodied mammals followed; the degree of selectivity was unprecedented in the Cenozoic fossil record. Today, most remaining large-bodied mammal species are confined to Africa, where they coevolved with hominins. Here, using a comprehensive global dataset of mammal distribution, life history and ecology, we examine the consequences of “body size downgrading” of mammals over the …

Defining The Morphological Quality Of Fossil Footprints. Problems And Principles Of Preservation In Tetrapod Ichnology With Examples From The Palaeozoic To The Present, Lorenzo Marchetti, Matteo Belvedere, Sebastian Voigt, Hendrik Klein, Diego Castanera, Ignacio Díaz-Martínez, Daniel Marty, Lida Xing, Silverio Feola, Ricardo N. Melchor, James O. Farlow

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

The morphology of fossil footprints is the basis of vertebrate footprint ichnology. However, the processes acting during and after trace fossil registration which are responsible for the final morphology have never been precisely defined, resulting in a dearth of nomenclature. Therefore, we discuss the concepts of ichnotaphonomy, ichnostratinomy, taphonomy, biostratinomy, registration and diagenesis and describe the processes acting on footprint morphology. In order to evaluate the morphological quality of tetrapod footprints, we introduce the concept of morphological preservation, which is related to the morphological quality of footprints (M-preservation, acronym MP), and distinguish it from physical preservation (P-preservation, acronym PP), which …

Diatom-Inferred Records Of Paleolimnological Variability And Continental Hydrothermal Activity In Yellowstone National Park, Usa, Sabrina Brown

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Fossil diatoms were used to reconstruct paleoclimatic and hydrothermal conditions in Yellowstone National Park. First, an extensive literature review summarizes the current state of knowledge about eukaryotic organisms characteristic of continental hydrothermal environments. Eukaryotes in hydrothermal systems can live at extremes of acidity (pH 9.0), and at moderately high temperatures (<62 >^○C). Silicate and carbonate precipitation in continental hydrothermal environments is mediated by eukaryotic organisms, which are important members of biofilm communities.

A case study of alkaline-chloride sinter deposits in Yellowstone Lake and the Upper Geyser Basin inferred in-situ diatom growth rather than post-depositional accumulation of valves settling from …

H.B. Bozeman Collection, University Archives And Special Collections, Prescott Memorial Library, Louisiana Tech University

Manuscript Finding Aids

Specimen of petrified palm wood found by Estes B. Bozeman in 1962-63 on the southeast flank of the Sikes Salt Dome, Winn Parish, Louisiana. Palm trees grew in the Winn Parish area 30-40 million years ago during the Tertiary Period of the Cenozoic Era.

Betting & Hierarchy In Paleontology, Leonard Finkelman

Faculty Publications

In his Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences, Adrian Currie argues that historical scientists should be optimistic about success in reconstructing the past on the basis of future research. This optimism follows in part from examples of success in paleontology. I argue that paleontologists’ success in these cases is underwritten by the hierarchical nature of biological information: extinct organisms have extant analogues at various levels of taxonomic, ecological, and physiological hierarchies, and paleontologists are adept at exploiting analogies within one informational hierarchy to infer information in another. On this account, fossils serve the role …

Crossed Tracks: Mesolimulus, Archaeopteryx, And The Nature Of Fossils, Leonard Finkelman

Faculty Publications

Organisms leave a variety of traces in the fossil record. Among these traces, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontologists conventionally recognize a distinction between the remains of an organism’s phenotype (body fossils) and the remains of an organism’s life activities (trace fossils). The same convention recognizes body fossils as biological structures and trace fossils as geological objects. This convention explains some curious practices in the classification, as with the distinction between taxa for trace fossils and for tracemakers. I consider the distinction between “parallel taxonomies,” or parataxonomies, which privileges some kinds of fossil taxa as “natural” and others as “artificial.” The motivations …

Microbiome And Metagenome Of An Anthropogenic Hyperalkaline Slag-Fill Waterway In South Chicago, Illinois, Usa, Jan Ingemar Ohlsson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The aquifers and waterways around the Lake Calumet area of south Chicago, IL, USA have been affected by a century of intensive industrial waste dumping. Steel slag in particular was used as infilling to claim most of the Calumet Wetlands for industrial and residential development. Since the prohibition and cessation of these disposal activities, a growing body of research has recorded the environmental and health effects of the infill, particularly where interactions between slag minerals and rainwater produces extremely alkaline groundwater (pH ≥13). Atmospheric carbon dioxide interacting with these calcium hydroxide-rich slag fluids produces massive precipitation of a loose, white …

Reframing The Mammoth Steppe: Insights From Analysis Of Isotopic Niches, Rachel Schwartz-Narbonne, Fred J. Longstaffe, Kevin J. Karydynal, Patrick Druckenmiller, Keith A. Hobson, Christopher N. Jass, Jessica Z. Metcalfe, Grant Zazula

Earth Sciences Publications

Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), horse (Equus spp.) and bison (Bisonspp.) coexisted with a variety of mammalian megafauna across the Pleistocene mammoth steppe e a megacontinental ecosystem that spanned northern Eurasia and northwestern North America. Previous research has suggested that highly conserved niches with minimal niche overlap allowed high levels of species diversity on the mammoth steppe. Here we evaluate previously published and some new collagen carbon and nitrogen isotope data (delta¹³C, delta¹⁵N) for mammoth steppe megaherbivores using Stable Isotope Bayesian Ellipses in R (SIBER) and linear regression models to determine isotopic …

Stable Isotopic Characterization Of A Coastal Floodplain Forest Community: A Case Study For Isotopic Reconstruction Of Mesozoic Vertebrate Assemblages, Thomas M. Cullen, Fred Longstaffe, Ulrich G. Wortmann, Mark B. Goodwin, Li Huang, David C. Evans

Earth Sciences Publications

Stable isotopes are powerful tools for elucidating ecological trends in extant vertebrate communities, though their application to Mesozoic ecosystems is complicated by a lack of extant isotope data from comparable environments/ecosystems (e.g. coastal floodplain forest environments, lacking significant C₄ plant components). We sampled 20 taxa across a broad phylogenetic, body size, and physiological scope from the Atchafalaya River Basin of Louisiana as an environmental analogue to the Late Cretaceous coastal floodplains of North America. Samples were analysed for stable carbon, oxygen and nitrogen isotope compositions from bioapatite and keratin tissues to test the degree of ecological resolution that can …

Death-Defying Morphologies: Mass Extinction And Disparity In The Order Harpetida, James Desmond Beech

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The trilobite order Harpetida has long been easily recognized but poorly understood. This study seeks to better understand the phylogenetic relationships within Harpetida, with a view towards using this group to explore the relationship between extinction intensity and disparity. The harpetid response to the Late Ordovician mass extinction is of particular interest. A discrete morphological character matrix was created from the formal descriptions of harpetids in the published trilobite literature, and refined using first-hand observations of harpetid fossils. The final matrix consists of 76 discrete characters, including 69 cephalic characters, three thoracic characters, and four pygidial characters. This matrix is …

Scanning Electron Microscope Study Of Microstructure And Regeneration Of Upper Pennsylvanian Cladid Crinoid Spines, Hannah Smith, James Thomka

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The crinoid skeleton is characterized by a complicated, highly porous microstructure known as stereom. Details of stereomic microstructural patterns are directly related to the distribution and composition of connective tissues, which are rarely preserved in fossils. However, certain portions of the crinoid skeleton have never been studied with respect to stereomic microstructure. In particular, spines are common features on the crowns of many Paleozoic crinoids but had not previously been studied in detail with respect to stereomic microstructure. This study focused on pirasocrinid cladid crinoids, a common group with numerous identifiable crown spines, including spines on the arms and anal …

Biodiversity And Distribution Of Benthic Foraminifera In Harrington Sound, Bermuda: The Effects Of Physical And Geochemical Factors On Dominant Taxa, Nam Le

Honors Theses

Harrington Sound, Bermuda, is a nearly enclosed lagoon acting as a subtropical/tropical, carbonate-rich basin in which carbonate sediments, reef patches, and carbonate-producing organisms accumulate. Here, one of the most important calcareous groups is the Foraminifera. Analyses of common benthic orders, including miliolids (Quinqueloculina and Triloculina spp.) and rotaliids (Homotrema rubrum, Elphidium spp., and Ammonia beccarii), are essential in understanding past and present environmental conditions affecting the island's coastal environment. These taxa have been studied previously; however, factors explaining their individual patterns of abundance in the Sound are not well detailed. The goal of this study is …

Discerning The Diets Of Sweep-Feeding Eurypterids Through Analyses Of Mesh-Modified Appendage Armature, Emily Samantha Hughes

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Eurypterids were a group of aquatic chelicerates that lived throughout most of the Paleozoic. While swimming eurypterids are generally considered to be active predators, the benthic stylonurine eurypterids appear to have had a mode of life similar to modern horseshoe crabs with the exception of two clades, the Stylonuroidea and the Mycteropoidea, both of which independently evolved modifications for sweep-feeding on their anterior appendages. Among extant suspension feeders, it has been shown that there is a linear correlation between the average spacing of feeding structures and prey sizes. This relationship was extrapolated to the sweep-feeding stylonuroid and mycteropoid eurypterids in …

Climatic Range Filling Of North American Trees, Benjamin Seliger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the degree to which species distributions are controlled by climate is crucial for forecasting biodiversity responses to climate change. Climatic equilibrium, when species are found in all places which are climatically suitable, is a fundamental assumption of species distribution models, but there is evidence in support of climate disequilibria in species ranges. Long-lived, sessile organisms such as trees may be especially vulnerable to being outpaced by climate change, and thus prone to disequilibrium. In this dissertation, I tested the degree to which North American trees are in equilibrium with their potential climatic ranges using the ‘range filling’ metric, which …

An Early Late Cretaceous Nodosaur From The Marine Eagle Ford Group Of North Central Texas, A Test Of The Endothermy In The Mosasaurs From The Late Cretaceous Of Angola, And The Ontogeny Of A New Pipid Frog From The Miocene Of Ethiopia, Matt Clemens

Earth Sciences Theses and Dissertations

The first two chapters of this dissertation detail the study of the newly recovered Holland Farm nodosaur (SMU 77100) from the Eagle Ford Group (95.29 ± 0.04 MA) of Mansfield in north central Texas. The objectives of this research are (1) to describe the anatomy of the Holland Farm nodosaur, (2) to determine its phylogenetic position within Ankylosauria, (3) to elaborate the substantial differences in body size and osteoderm morphology in armored dinosaurs occurring in north central Texas during the short duration of the Late Albian and Early Cenomanian, and (4) to provide a radiometric date for the lowermost member …

Evaluating Stable Isotope And Geochronologic Techniques For Paleoclimate Reconstruction: Case Study Of The Santa Cruz Formation, Argentina, Robin B. Trayler

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Stable isotope analysis has become the method of choice for many studies investigating the paleoecology and paleoclimate of fossil mammal faunas. While organic tissues (collagen, keratins, proteins) persist for < 10⁵ years highly mineralized tooth enamel is resistant to alteration and degradation and faithfully preserves its isotopic composition for millions (> 10⁶) years. Reconstructing past climates from these records relies on both understanding both micro-scale mechanisms of isotope incorporation into individual teeth, and macro-scale changes in isotope compositions over hundreds of thousands or millions of years. In this dissertation I address three questions.

First, how does the geometry and …