Date:
Tuesday, April 3, 2018, 2:00pm
Location:
Haller Hall (Geology Museum 102)
Lauren Sallan
Martin Meyerson Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies
Earth and Environmental Science
University of Pennsylvania
Earth and Environmental Science
University of Pennsylvania
The Rise and Fall of Fishes: How Ecology and Mass Extinction Shaped Vertebrate BiodiversityVertebrates (55000+ species) originated as "fishes" some 540 million years ago. However, their path to numerical superiority was long and unlikely; they are marginal or missing from productive ecosystems during the Cambrian Explosion and Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event. Here I show how quantitative paleobiology can reveal the ecological factors and environmental events during the mid-Paleozoic allowed vertebrate to become essential components of marine biodiversity, and eventually caused a initially-stable global fish fauna to be replaced by the "primitive" fishes we see today.
See also: EHaP Seminars