The geological time scale
We are interested in the origins of biodiversity. Our research uses and develops quantitative approaches to reconstruct evolutionary history from the fossil record, with a particular emphasis on the unusual organisms from Burgess Shale -type deposits and their microscopic counterparts, the Small Carbonaceous Fossils .
530 million years ago, the fossil record documents a step change in the complexity and abundance of life on Earth. Our understanding of this ‘Cambrian Explosion’ is fundamentally incomplete. Was it one event or multiple bursts? How did diversification relate to contemporary environmental changes? Can it be explained by presentday evolutionary processes?
The Leverhulme Trust have awarded us funding to develop mathematical techniques that integrate geological observations from across the globe, generating a single record of biological and environmental changes through time. This will establish the rate at which animal biodiversity arose, and the triggers and consequences of this riot of evolution.
The geological time scale