Collaborative Research: RUI: Silty streams and diluted seas in the Late Devonian Appalachian Basin: Probing the effects of early icehouse extremes on vertebrate paleogeobiology

About This Grant

At the end of the Devonian period the Earth experienced a uniquely cool climate, the first record of limbed vertebrates, and one of Earth’s “Big Five” mass extinctions. For this study, researchers are collecting and analyzing data from rock and fossil samples from surface exposures and from the subsurface (rock cores) to test the link between environmental extremes and vertebrate habitats during the late Devonian ~360 million years ago. This work will advance understanding of connections between biological, chemical, and physical processes in Earth’s past. This collaborative and multidisciplinary project will support the education and development of eight students and two early career faculty. It will involve rural community public outreach to share knowledge of Devonian geology, which underlies much of the rural landscape of central Pennsylvania, including educational field events and the development of an interactive display at a highly trafficked rural zoo. Engaging with the public through this research will promote awareness of Earth science career paths, and the significance of such knowledge in understanding our planet’s past and future. Evidence of late Famennian (~361-359 Ma) glaciation along the eastern margin of North America is spatially limited and controversial yet calls for abrupt and anomalous cold climates globally that are unrecognized in existing models for the earliest stages of the Late Paleozoic Ice Age (LPIA). This project examines the Upper Devonian rock record in Pennsylvania and Ohio (Appalachian Basin) along a continental-to-marine transect, acquiring abundant new geochemical, sedimentological, and paleontological data to 1—establish an age framework for broad correlation, 2—scrutinize the (long-debated) glaciogenic nature of these deposits, and 3—elucidate dramatic paleoenvironmental changes in vertebrate habitats that hosted the fins-to-limbs transition. This is an archetypal region to assess the impact of environmental change on aquatic ecosystems, but modern quantitative analytical data are lacking to date. 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.