The Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale in the Walcott Quarry looking along Fossil Ridge to Mount Wapta Beecher's Trilobite Bed Graduate student Una Farrell Beecher's Trilobite Bed, in the Upper Ordovician (Caradoc) near Rome in upper New York State, is a classic locality for the preservation of trilobite appendages. It is also one of a very few localities world-wide where soft-tissues are mineralized in pyrite. A new excavation is underway with a number of objectives: 1. To determine the paleoecology of the fauna and compare it with similar occurrences like the Ordovician Soom Shale fauna of South Africa, and with the pyritized muddy bottom fauna of the Devonian Hunsrück Slate of Germany; 2. To test the hypothesis that olenid trilobites may be the oldest known chemoautotrophic symbionts; 3. To refine our understanding of the geochemical controls on the pyritization of soft tissues. The site of the 1989 excavation of Beecher's Trilobite Bed which has been considerably extended as part of the current project. Eurypterid paleobiology and taphonomy Postdoc Erik Tetlie funded by the Norges Forskningsrad (The Research Council of Norway) This project is based largely on the research collection of Samuel J. Ciurca Jr. of Rochester, which has been acquired by the Yale Peabody Museum. This is undoubtedly the largest collection of eurypterids and fossil scorpions in the world, accumulated during the last 40 years. It includes thousands of eurypterids, fossil scorpions, xiphosurans and their associated fauna from North America. The project addresses the paleoecology, taphonomy and phylogeny of eurypterids and scorpions, mainly from the classic lithologies in New York State and Ontario. One of thousands of spectacularly preserved eurypterid specimens from the Ciurca collection. The molecular structure of organic fossils Postdoc Neal Gupta funded by Yale University This project seeks to understand how organic materials in plants, and animal groups such as arthropods and graptolites, are preserved. The approach involves analyses of fossils and their living counterparts, and experimental techniques including decay and artificial maturation. The focus is on both lipids and aliphatic components. The documentation and interpretation of preserved stable isotopic ratios in organic fossil material (particularly insects) is also under investigation. An oak leaf from the Miocene Clarkia site in Idaho which yields remarkable molecular data. Conserving and incorporating the stratigraphic collection of brachiopods into the systematic collection (the "Schuchert Collection") and the development of an online database In collaboration with Susan Butts (Collections Manager for Invertebrate Paleontology, Yale Peabody Museum), funded by NSF The Peabody Museum houses a world-renowned invertebrate paleontology collection of which thirty-five percent of which are brachiopods. Brachiopods are abundant in the fossil record, but are far less common in modern ocean settings. The National Science Foundation, Biological Research Collections Division, has awarded the Division of Invertebrate Paleontology a three-year grant to facilitate and increase the use of the brachiopod collections by future researchers and to promote public education of this important fossil group. Paleontological and paleoenvironmental study of the Middle Cambrian Spence, Wheeler, and Marjum soft-bodied faunas of Utah In collaboration with Bruce Lieberman (Kansas), Mary Droser (UC Riverside) and Bob Gaines (Pomona College), funded by NSF This project focuses on the discovery of new Burgess Shale-type biotas in Utah. The major objectives are 1. To prepare, describe, monograph, and fit into a phylogenetic and paleobiogeographic framework new taxa from the Middle Cambrian soft-bodied faunas of the Spence Member and the Wheeler and Marjum Formations using recent collections made from Utah; 2. To use microanalytical techniques to determine the taphonomy of the fossils at the specimen-level; and 3. To place the soft bodied organisms and the taphonomic processes involved in their preservation into a detailed paleoenvironmental framework using newly developed microstratigraphic techniques. A new enigmatic metazoan from the Middle Cambrian of Utah. Reconstructing the High Latitude Permian-Triassic: Life, Landscapes, and Climate Recorded in the Allan Hills, South Victoria Land, Antarctica In collaboration with Molly Miller (Vanderbilt), Christian Sidor (NY Institute of Technology) and John Isbell (U Wisconsin-Milwaukee), funded by NSF This project will test and refine the evolving climate model and investigate the effects of climate change on Permo-Triassic landscapes and ecosystems. Utilizing superb exposures in the Allan Hills region, the project will investigate fossil forests, vertebrate tracks and burrows, arthropod trackways, and subaqueously produced biogenic structures, in order to document the style of the end of glaciation and the importance of major episodic sedimentation. The Allan Hills exposures provide a unique opportunity to compare high latitude forests and freshwater and terrestrial faunas, during an important period of their evolution, with better-known low latitude equivalents. Permian arthropod trackway from the Beardmore Glacier area (photo courtesy of Molly Miller). Virtual fossils: the palaeobiology of the Herefordshire Lagerstätte In collaboration with Derek Siveter (Oxford), David Siveter (Leicester) and Mark Sutton (Imperial College), funded by The Leverhulme Trust The fossils of the Herefordshire Lagerstätte represent a community of small invertebrate animals that lived on the sea floor during the Silurian Period about 425 million years ago. They died and were preserved when they were suddenly engulfed in ash from a volcanic eruption. The fossils preserve soft-tissues of marine invertebrates in three-dimensions; a series of fossils from this site reconstructed using digital techniques have provided previously unattainable anatomical details on a variety of different types of animals. Less than half of the new species that we know of have yet been studied. We have collected many thousands of nodules that await splitting there will be many more significant discoveries over the coming years. A sea-spider from the Silurian Herefordshire Lagerstätte (above) with a modern example for comparison (photos courtesy of Mark Sutton and Derek Siveter).