Earth System Paleobiology: closing the geological and biological gap – Call for abstracts at EGU2020

European Geoscience Union

We invite contributions to the session Earth System Paleobiology: closing the geological and biological gap at European Geoscience Union General Assembly 2020 on 3-8 May in Vienna. The session is organized by Kenneth De Baets, Emilia Jarochowska, Martin Schobben and Melanie Tietje. Travel grants for Early Career Researchers will be available from EGU for presenters who will submit their abstracts by 1. December. The final deadline for abstract submission is 15. January.

Session description:

Information about macroevolutionary history, past biodiversity, ecology, biogeochemical cycles, climate and environmental change is enclosed in the sedimentary rock record. This information can be extracted with traditional palaeontological, sedimentological and geochemical techniques. Nonetheless, preservation, diagenesis, erosion, sea-level changes, sampling strategies, and analytical approaches can distort this information and introduce biases in the reconstructions of past Earth processes. This problem has gained wider recognition with respect to palaeontological patterns, particularly in the field of stratigraphic palaeobiology addressing the impact of the sequence-stratigraphic architecture on fossil data. However, similar aspects can as well alter geochemical proxy records. For example, diagenetic trajectories specific to certain lithologies can dictate stratigraphic patterns in stable and radiogenic isotope as well as (trace) elemental composition. Hence, approaches that correct for these artifacts in palaeontological, sedimentological and geochemical time series might share many commonalities. We invite contributions that use frequentist statistics, Bayesian statistics, mechanistic models, and machine learning to tackle these problems across different timescales and disciplines, ranging from the Precambrian up to the Holocene, and which contribute to a holistic understanding of the Earth system.

Looking forward to seeing you in Vienna!