Collaborative Research: After the Bridgerian Crash: An Integrated Analysis of Mammalian Paleocommunities and Paleoecologies During the Middle Eocene.

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The modern climatic crisis appears unprecedented as it represents a spike in global warming during an overall cooling period that began during glacial times. Yet, numerous rapidly occurring global warming events are recorded in deep time. This project will study how ecosystems respond to extreme warming by investigating changes in mammalian diversity, vegetation, and soil development in ~45 million-year-old deposits found in northeastern Utah. The results of this work will provide an opportunity to use the past to understand the present response of mammalian and plant communities to rapid warming events in the long term, information that is critical for the management of habitat resources. Additional broader impacts of this study include the development of scientific expertise in undergraduate students; science outreach at multiple museums via exhibits and modules; sharing data, methods, and results via scientific dissemination, open access publications and social media; and curriculum development for K-12 students.The Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO), increased global surface temperatures by 4 degrees Celsius, which is the same increase predicted for our modern climatic crisis by 2100. The goal of this project is to generate a multi-faceted model that will correlate patterns of biotic change bracketing the MECO and thus learn more about a warming event that is similar in thermal scope to our own. This will be accomplished by integrating stratigraphic and geochemical data with biostratigraphic and ecomorphological analyses to evaluate changes in habitat and mammalian community structure in the Uinta Basin, Utah, before, during, and after the MECO event. To achieve the project goals a team of sedimentologists, geochemists, palynologists, and paleontologists will use their integrated approach to evaluate how ecosystems responded to an extreme warming event. The success of this integrated approach is expected to transform our knowledge of mammalian species and habitat response to a global warming event.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.