U.S.-Mexico Planning Visit: Paleoecological and Evolutionary Significance of Invertebrate Fossil Assemblages from the Mexican Neogene, March 2007

这项美国墨西哥计划访问计划将支持一个由四名美国古生物学家组成的团队，其中包括具有同位素地球化学、古生态学、本科研究和地层学背景的专家，他们将在南佛罗里达大学的格雷戈里·赫伯特博士和彼得·哈里斯博士的指导下对墨西哥进行为期14天的计划访问。这次访问的主要目标是与该国的同事建立广泛的合作研究和教育伙伴关系，以研究新近纪期间墨西哥湾西部海洋无脊椎动物生物群的演变。研究人员将与墨西哥国家地质学院(UNAM)的古生物学家Francisco Vera Vega博士会面，以确定恰帕斯和韦拉克鲁斯的野外地点，这些地点将最好地支持该团队多学科研究以及研究生和本科教育的历史。该小组还计划调查国家古生物学会(UNAM)和自然与生态学会的无脊椎动物古生物收藏，以确定这些重要的收藏是否以及如何最好地纳入未来的工作。研究人员计划在沉积地质学和古生物学方面提出合作建议，如果可能的话，还将制定本科生研究经验计划作为这次访问的结果。这次访问的研究成果应该有助于增加我们对地球近代史上最戏剧性的气候和海洋变化之一的生物变化的了解，并有助于教育下一代古生物学家。

This U.S. Mexico Planning Visit proposal will support a team of four U.S. paleontologists, including specialists with background in isotope geochemistry, paleoecology, undergraduate research, and stratigraphy, under the direction of Dr. Gregory Herbert and Peter Harries of the University of South Florida on a 14 day planning visit to Mexico. The primary goal of the visit is to develop a broad collaborative research and education partnership with colleagues in that country to study the evolution of marine invertebrate biotas in the western Gulf of Mexico during the Neogene. The researchers will meet with Dr. Francisco Vera Vega, a paleontologist with the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Instituto de Geologia (UNAM), to identify field sites in Chiapas and Veracruz that will best support the team's history of multidisciplinary approach to research and graduate and undergraduate education. The team also plans to survey the invertebrate paleontology collections of the Coleccion Nacional de Paleontologia (UNAM) and the Instituto de Historia Natural y Ecologia de Chiapas to determine whether and how these important collections can best be incorporated into future work. The investigators plan to develop collaborative proposals in Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology and, if possible, Research Experiences for Undergraduates program as outcomes of this visit. The research outcomes of this visit should help to increase our understanding of biotic changes during one of the most dramatic episodes of climatic and oceanographic change in recent Earth history, as well as help educate the next generation of paleontologists.