Palaeobiology and Global Change

The fossil record of “deep-time” ecological and biogeographical processes and ecosystem evolution provides the only tangible tool to probe into the dynamics of the past biotic responses to global change at a temporal scale extending well beyond the human impact, ranging from thousands to millions of years. The fossil record of past biotic changes also provides a natural laboratory to test many modern ecological theories (eg. island biogeography) that mostly have been derived from short-term human observations but yet frequently extrapolated to an expanded range of spatial and temporal scales. It is in this context that this multidisciplinary School Research Priority group, Palaeobiology and Global Change, is established.

The research objectives of this group are aimed at addressing such fundamental and long-standing scientific questions as how species dispersed in space and time, how they were affected by and in some cases co-evolved with pervasive (at times catastrophic) global environmental changes, and how they recovered from extinctions. Knowledge generated from the "deep time" fossil record can provide invaluable historic insights into all these questions, and is therefore widely regarded as having a predictive power to assist us in assessing the current state and future health of the Australian and global ecosystems.

Research theme areas

• General Geology,
• Sedimentology,
• Palaeontology. Micropalaeontology and Palaeoecology,
• Palaeogeography and plate tectonics,
• Biogeography and Palaeobiogeography,
• Palaeoenvironmental analysis and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction,
• Global change (including aspects of climate change)

Group coordinator

Guang Shi
Acting Head of School
Melbourne Campus at Burwood
Phone: +61 3 925 17619
Email: guang.shi@deakin.edu.au