Pas Damien
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Generating a highly resolved astronomical time scale for the evolutionary and ecological events during the Cambrian Explosion
The Cambrian Explosion is a foremost turning point in the evolution of life occurring within the Cambrian Period (~541 to ~485 million years ago), which saw the origination and explosive radiation of all major animal phyla. The bursts of evolution characterizing this period appear concurrently with major modifications of the physico-chemical conditions of the world’s ocean and are recorded among a series of critical fossil localities where soft-tissues are exceptionally preserved such as the lagerstätten like the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang Biota. As a result of the severe lack of biostratigraphically-correlatable fossils (endemism is the rule during the Cambrian) and very rare high-precision radioisotopic dates, the Cambrian time scale remains among the least precise in all the Phanerozoic Eon with a minimum uncertainty of ±2 million years at stage boundary. The absence of a high-resolution Geological Time Scale (GTS) for the Cambrian Explosion hampers our ability to robustly address a series of widely debated questions over the origin and the rate of the evolutionary and ecological events, their relationship with palaeoceanographic changes, and the claims on whether these events are globally synchronous. Using an integrated set of geophysical/chemical proxies with advanced time series techniques on selected stratigraphic sections, this project addresses the fundamental question:
What is the timing of Cambrian Explosion evolutionary events and how were they influenced by the mechanics of the solar system and global paleoceanographic changes?
To know more about my project please visit: https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/193520
