INSPIRE: Forging new connections among mammalian evolution, environmental change, and tectonics during the Eocene.

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INSPIRE: Forging new connections among mammalian evolution, environmental change, and tectonics during the Eocene.K. Christopher Beard and Michael TaylorUniversity of Kansas, EAR-1543684ABSTRACTThis INSPIRE project is jointly funded by the Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology Program in the Earth Sciences Division of the Geosciences (GEO) Directorate, the Biological Anthropology Program in the Division of Behavorial and Cognitive Sciences of the Social, Behavorial and Economic (SBE) Directorate, the SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities, the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE), and the Office of International and Integrative Activities (OIIA) INSPIRE program. This project investigates how dramatic changes in the Earth's environment impacted the evolution of early primates and other mammals in southwest Asia and adjacent regions. An international team of scientists from the University of Kansas and partner institutions in the USA, Turkey and France will explore Eocene (~40-45 million years old) fossil sites that include both African and Eurasian mammals. These Eocene mammals lived in an environment wrought by remarkable climatic and geologic changes. The team will explore potential links between plate tectonics, environmental change, and the evolution of both native mammal groups and "invasive species" such as early anthropoids (primate ancestors of modern monkeys, apes and humans) that were colonizing Africa for the first time. Early anthropoids and other Asian mammals may have traversed southwest Asia in order to get to Africa, a hypothesis that will be tested by the PIs work. The project will strengthen scientific cooperation and educational opportunities between American and Turkish scientists and students, while fundamentally advancing the understanding of early mammalian evolution, including our own anthropoid primate ancestors, at the crossroads between Africa, Europe and Asia.The multidisciplinary team working on this project will collect new data in the field and perform detailed investigations in the lab aimed at: (1) documenting and characterizing the Eocene mammal fauna in order to understand the phylogenetic and biogeographic relationships of individual taxa and how the entire fauna was assembled; (2) constraining the timing and processes of accretion of Gondwanan microplates onto Turkey and their relationship to the Eocene mammal faunas there; (3) establishing a multi-proxy reconstruction of Eocene environments and its impact on the local fauna and environment; (4) assessing the potential role of Turkey as a pathway for the colonization of Africa by early Asian anthropoid primates and other mammals; and (5) conducting macroevolutionary analyses of the mammalian fossil record to investigate predictable links between the physical environment and patterns of faunal dispersal and faunal turnover.