Paleobiogeography

Curator Bruce Lieberman has an interest in paleobiogeographic studies and this has formed an important component of his research.  This research has involved phylogenetic approaches, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Ecological Niche Modelling (ENM) to study biogeographic patterns in deep time using the fossil record. 

This research has also included applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Ecological Niche Modeling (ENM) to study biogeographic patterns in deep time using the fossil record. Some of this work was done in conjunction with Lieberman's former student Alycia Stigall, who is now a professor at Ohio University, and involved exploring ecology and evolution during the Late Devonian biodiversity crisis. Other research with her and his former postdoc Jon Hendricks involving a GIS based analysis of paleobiogeographic and evolutionary patterns in Cambrian Burgess Shale type faunas is figured above.

Lieberman's lab has also been very interested in using GIS to explore the role that competition plays in influencing macroevolution. His former student Cori Myers and he conducted a GIS based analysis of the charismatic marine vertebrate fauna of the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway. Their results suggest that in the Cretaceous, and perhaps in general at the grand scale of the history of life, environmental factors played a much more prominent role in structuring geographic distributions, and causing extinction, than interspecific competition.