Earth-Life Transitions Paleobiology in the Context of Earth System Evolution

About this book

Presented as a Paleontological Society Short Course at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America Baltimore, Maryland October 31, 2015.

The effects of humans on Earth's ecosystems, atmosphere, soils, ice caps, and oceans are an increasingly insistent remind that the biosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, and hydrosphere are inextricably linked. Interactions between organisms and geological processes are not unique to anthropogenic events, however, and the history of Earth-life transitions allows the dynamic relationships between biosphere and outer Earth systems to be understood over long timescales and evolutionary and ecological outcomes – including extinction – to be assessed. The papers in Earth-Life Transitions contribute to this discussion by exploring Earth-life transitions from the Proterzoic to the Anthropocene. They add not only to our understanding of Earth-life dyanmics, but also to the way we approach its study

Contents

- Earth-life transitions: paleobiology in the context of Earth system evolution - Foreword / P. David Polly, Jason J. Head, and David L. Fox
- A quantitative model for distinguishing between climate change, human impact, and their synergistic interaction as drives of the Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions / Charles R. Marshall, Emily L. Lindsey, Natalia A. Villavicencio, and Anthony D. Barnosky
- Measuring Earth-life transitions: ecometric analysis of functional traits from Late Cenozoic vertebrates / P. David Polly and Jason J. Head
- Late Proterozoic transitions in climate, oxygen, tectonics, and rise of complex life / Noah J. Planavsky, Lidya G. Tarhan, Eric J. Bellefroid, David A. D. Evans, Christopher T. Reinhard, Gordon D. Love, and Timothy W. Lyons
- Reconstructing the dust cycle in deep time: the case of the Late Palaeozoic icehouse / Gerilyn S. Soreghan, Nicholas G. Heavens, Linda A. Hinnov, Sarah M. Aciego, and Carl Simpson
- Marine ecological state-shifts following the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction / Kathleen A. Ritterbush, Yadira Ibarra, David J. Bottjer, Frank A. Corsetti, Silvia Rosas, A. Joshua West, William M. Berelson, and Joyce Ann Yager
- Integrating paleobotanical, paleosol, and stratigraphic data to study critical transitions: a case study from the Late Cretaceous-Paleocene of India / Selena Y. Smith, Steven R. Manchester, Bandana Samant, Dhananjay M. Mohabey, Elizabeth Wheeler, Pieter Baas, Dashrath Kapgate, Rashmi Srivastava, and Nathan D. Sheldon
- Reconstructing extinct plant water use for understanding vegetation-climate feedbacks: methods, synthesis, and a case study using the Paleozoic-Era Medullosan seed ferns / Johnathan P. Wilson, Joseph D. White, William A. DiMichele, Michael T. Hren, Christopher J. Poulson, Jennifer C. McElwain, and Isabel P. Montañez
- Biotic and abiotic forcing during the transition to modern grassland ecosystems: evolutionary and ecological responses of small mammal communities over the last 5 million years / David L. Fox, Robert A. Martin, Elizabeth Roepke, Anne C. Fetrow, Brendan Fischer-Femal, Kevin T. Uno, Kena Fox-Dobbs, Kathryn E. Snell, Andrew Havales, and Pratigya J. Possilar

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