Collaborative Research: Austral Portals Workshop: Tectonics, Paleogeography and Biogeography

该奖项支持2010年5月在美国自然历史博物馆举办的一个讲习班，其明确目标是绘制一条纠正南极冈瓦纳周边古生物地理和板块构造历史中明显不协调的道路。“南极门户”研讨会旨在汇集来自广泛的地质和生物学科的研究人员，他们的兴趣集中在整理冈瓦纳大陆分裂的多重后果上，主要目标是集中在南极洲和超大陆西部（南美洲和非洲/印度/马达加斯加）的古地理学和古生物地理学的最新研究。在这个时候把这个群体聚集在一起的一个突出原因是，关于南极洲的古地理如何可能或可能不会影响140-40 Ma期间陆地生物的分布，有几个具体的分歧。许多相关的工作只是在过去几年中才发表的，但对于可能在非常不同的科学研究领域工作的研究人员来说，大部分仍然是陌生的。另一个主要问题涉及准南极海洋通道（如德雷克通道）开放的时间，以及这些航道如何影响气候，并间接影响南极生物的进化。

This award supports a workshop at the American Museum of Natural History in May 2010 with the explicit goal of charting a path towards rectifying apparent incongruities in the paleobiogeographic and plate tectonic histories of peri-Antarctic Gondwana. The "Austral Portals" workshop is designed to bring together investigators from a broad swath of geological and biological disciplines whose interests converge on sorting out the manifold consequences of the breakup of Gondwana, with the primary goal of focusing on the newest research on the paleogeography and paleobiogeography of Antarctica and the western parts of the supercontinent (South America and Africa/India/Madagascar). One prominent reason for bringing together this group at this time is that there are several specific instances of disagreement concerning how the paleogeography of Antarctica may or may not have influenced the distribution of terrestrial biotas in the interval 140-40 Ma. Much of the relevant work has been published only in the last few years, yet largely remains unfamiliar to investigators who may be working in very different areas of scientific inquiry. Another major issue concerns the timing of the opening of para-Antarctic oceanic gateways, such as the Drake Passage, and how these seaways may have affected climate and, indirectly, the evolution of austral biotas.