This session aims to bring together a diverse group of scientists who are interested in how life and planetary processes have co-evolved over geological time, from the Precambrian to the Phanerozoic Eon. This includes studies of how changes in paleo-environments and -geography have influenced the evolution of complex life - including animals, plants, and marine ecosystems - and how, in turn, biological innovations have reshaped Earth system processes. We seek to link fossil records to paleo-Earth processes, highlighting the interplay between biological evolution and tectonic, magmatic, and surface processes and explore how alternating greenhouse-icehouse climates have influenced biodiversity and ecosystem structure. Further, as paleogeography exerts a fundamental control on Earth’s climate and the evolution of life, we welcome contributions that reconstruct paleogeography and explore its impacts, from the reconstruction of ancient supercontinents to the controls of ocean gateways on climate and biotic dispersals.
As an inherently multi-disciplinary subject, we aspire to better understand the complex coupling of biogeochemical cycles and life, the links between mass extinctions and their causal geological events, how fossil records shed light on ecosystem drivers over deep time, and how tectono-geomorphic processes impact biodiversity patterns at global or local scales. We further encourage submissions that use new approaches to unravel the interplay between paleogeography, paleoclimate, and biological evolution across Earth’s history. We aim to understand our planet and its biosphere and climate through both observation- and modelling-based studies.
Alison Cribb