New Fossil Study by H. David Sheets, PhD, is Published
A new study of nearly 22,000 fossils finds that ancient plankton communities began changing in important ways as much as 400,000 years before massive die-offs ensued during the first of Earth’s five great extinctions.
The research, published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on large zooplankton called graptolites. It suggests that the effects of environmental degradation can be subtle until they reach a tipping point, at which dramatic declines in population begin.
“In looking at these organisms, what we saw was a disruption of community structures — the way in which the plankton were organized in the water column. Communities came to be less complex and dominated by fewer species well before the massive extinction itself,” says H. David Sheets, PhD, professor of physics at Canisius and co-author of the study.
This turmoil, occurring in a time of ancient climate change, could hold lessons for the modern world.
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Submitted by: College Communications
Join the Women’s Business Center for a workshop entitled “Advanced Tactics for Business Growth” on Thursday July 28 from 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. in the computer lab located in Science Hall Room 1008.
All faculty and staff now have Google Drive provided as part of Google Apps for Education. This is a secure, password-protected online (“cloud”) storage space where users can store files to be accessed in a variety of places and on various devices. Google Drive also allows users to share large or numerous files that are impractical as email attachments. An easy-to-use productivity toolset, including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms, makes collaborating on projects much easier than passing documents back and forth via email.
