Paleobiology Commons^™

Evaluating Biotic Effecrs Associated With The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum In Mississippi And Alabama: A Palynological And Biostratigraphic Study Of Amoco's Legacy Samples, Sarah Fortin Bancroft

LSU Master's Theses

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a ~200 ka period of rapid global warming in the earliest Eocene (~56 Ma) involving a roughly 7 °C rise in atmospheric and sea-surface temperatures. The Gulf of Mexico Wilcox Group contains very well-preserved terrestrial and deltaic sediments that contain exploitable hydrocarbons . The Wilcox Group’s Paleocene Tuscahoma and Eocene Hatchetigbee Formations have been roughly dated with calcareous and planktonic foraminiferal assemblages by AMOCO; however, the precise ages of these formations, their palynological assemblages, and their paleo-depositional geosystems are an area of active research.

Through a high-resolution palynological analysis, this study assesses the depositional …

Evaluating Fungal Population Response To The Miocene Climatic Optimum: High-Resolution Palynological Insights From The South China Sea And Mcmurdo Sound, Antarctica, Mallory Pilie

LSU Master's Theses

Fungi play key and specific roles in ecosystems, specifically as many have restricted geographic distributions, known host/substrate preferences, and are important local environmental indicators due to their short dispersal distances. This study of fossil fungi from a time interval of pronounced global warming, the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO), allows analysis of fungal response to an analogue for future climate change scenarios. The research presented herein is part of a larger project, Fungi in a Warmer World (FiaWW), which is using globally-distributed sediment samples to provide foundational information on fungal community distribution patterns and will provide the first fungi-based climatological reconstructions …

Palynology And Paleoclimatology Of The Chicxulub Impact Crater In The Early Paleogene, Vann Smith

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

At the end of the Cretaceous Period, a large bolide impacted the Earth and formed the Chicxulub impact crater in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. In 2016, International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 364 Site M0077 drilled into the buried peak ring of the crater, recovering a marine Paleocene to early Eocene post-impact section deposited on top of the impact breccia. Palynological analysis of 195 samples from the post-impact section has yielded the first pre-Holocene vegetational record from inside the Chicxulub impact crater and the first palynological record of the recovery of life following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction from inside the …