Paleoecology of the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway

Ceara Purcell, PhD Student

Earth and Planetary Sciences
Mentor: Corinne Myers

Paleontological and sedimentological records from the Western Interior Seaway and the adjacent Gulf Coastal Plain represent an important window into Earth’s history, recording aspects of marine life relevant to understanding ancient and present-day systems. This includes the relationship between abiotic factors and biotic responses as indicated by spatiotemporal patterns in biogeography, functional diversity, and species niche occupation.

Using a dataset compiled from extensive records of marine invertebrates and sedimentary data representing approximately 17 million years of deposition, the analyses presented here reconstruct and assess these aspects of ancient marine ecology to better understand ancient and modern systems.

Using modern techniques, including network modeling, these investigations furthermore attempt to determine some of the fundamental biases and limitations of the dataset as a whole in order to create a framework for future investigations into the paleoecology of North America.