US - Egypt Cooperative Research: Climate Change and Biotic Effects During the Late Cretaceous of Egypt

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This collaborative research project is being undertaken by Dr. Gerta Keller, Princeton University, and Dr. Abdel Aziz Tantawy, South Valley University in Egypt, to collect the necessary long-term biotic, mineralogical and geochemical records needed to understand the greenhouse-icehouse transition and the late Cretaceous environmental changes. The Campanian-Maastrichtian interval is a critical time period in Earth's history. It marks (1) the long-term global cooling accompanied by fluctuations in sea-level and productivity, (2) witnessed the gradual demise of most of the greenhouse world fauna and flora and the evolution and adaptive strategies of species trying to survive in the changing paleoenvironment, but mostly failing, and (3) witnessed one of Earth's five major mass extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous. These global events are most pronounced in the continental shelf sediments of the eastern Tethys and Egypt in particular. The transition was accompanied by sea level fluctuations and intermittent organic-rich sedimentation that created most of the currently known oil, gas and phosphorite deposits. Study of these sediments, as proposed in this project can yield critical information to help understand the environmental and biotic changes associated with major climatic transitions.The main research objective is to develop a comprehensive integrated multi-disciplinary history of late Cretaceous climate, sea-level and biotic changes in Egypt with special emphasis on mineral and organic-rich deposits that yield scientific information regarding biotic consequences of climate warming. The proposed study will include paleontology, stable isotopes, mineralogy, and geochemistry. The results will provide the necessary long-term biotic, mineralogical and geochemical records needed to understand the greenhouse-icehouse transition, significantly improve our understanding of both long-term and short-term biotic diversity changes, and elucidate the environmental conditions that led to the decline of the Cretaceous fauna during the Campanian and leading up to the K-T mass extinction. The database generated will be directly applicable to future paleoenvironmental studies of the region.This study involves international collaboration between US scientists and those of 3 other countries (Egypt, Germany, and Switzerland), as well as opportunities for US student (graduate and undergraduate) participation in international research.