Vignettes on preservation, preparation, and paleoecology
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Subject
Abstract
Preservation exercises strong control over what can be observed and interpreted from the fossil record. The research projects presented here seek to examine the ways in which certain preservational types clarify some aspects of the paleoenvironments they chronicle while obscuring others. From the Holocene of the Salish Sea, the pristine condition of original bivalve shell material tells a story of parasitic interactions usually obliterated in older fossils by the coarsening effects of diagenesis. Drawing on this well-preserved material, we hope to characterize how parasitism pressure in coastal bivalves has changed during the Holocene. Meanwhile, Upper Ordovician rocks from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia contain a preservational double-bill, with fine-detailed silicification and incomplete pyritization cropping up side-by-side with potentially starkly different taxonomic and body-size biases and biogeochemical requirements. Based on the simultaneous presence of these two preservational types, we ask: what kinds of organisms are preserved through one pathway or the other, and which survive preparation? And how do different preparation styles affect paleobiological interpretation of a deposit? Rather than a single cohesive program of research, I present three vignettes on preservation, preparation, and paleoecology.
Table of Contents
DOI
PubMed ID
Degree
Ph. D.