The lady who studies fossil poop
Dr Hannah Byrne recently defended her doctoral thesis in which she used tides and coprolites, yes fossilized poop, to study the ecosystems during the fish-to-tetrapod transition. Just before she defended her thesis, she took the time for an interview with us and explained to us how you can use coprolites to reconstruct the ecosystem just a mass extinction. Even if you have only a few fossil skeletons, a giant load of shit tells you a lot more animals were there!
Link to tides paper: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2020.0355
Link to Carboniferous Coprolites from Greenland paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2022...
Projects working to close Romer’s Gap:
The TWeed project: http://tetrapods.org/
Blue Beach: https://bluebeachfossilmuseum.com/his...
Uppsala University Greenland expedition - https://www.uu.se/en/news/article/?id...
Credits:
Uppsala University – Uppsala University
Picture of Hannah’s thesis – Melanie During, with cover photograph by Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki
Tide – RostislavUzunov – Pixabay
Fish to tetrapod transition - • 3.2.4 We Are Fish
Poop - Alexa – Pixabay
Marine life - Maxmilian Nemec – Pixabay
Tidal upwelling - NOAA - http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/educatio...
Gravitational forcing Earth and moon - NASA/LRO/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution
Life in the Devonian - USGS; Diarama by Masato Hattori. Map courtesy of Colorado Plateau Geosystems Inc., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Fin to limb – Freitas et al., 2007 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone....
Greenland - mahlersilvan on Unsplash
Coprolite locality Greenland – Byrne et al., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2022...
ESRF – Heinrich – Wikipedia
American Psycho Giphy - https://media.giphy.com/media/JBN6hII...
Spiral gut valve of a nurse shark – Haplochromis – Wikipedia
Shark - https://www.flickr.com/photos/usocean...
Lung fish – Open Cage – Wikipedia
Sturgeon - Daniel Döhne – Wikipedia
Life in the Carboniferous - USGS; Diarama by Masato Hattori. Map courtesy of Colorado Plateau Geosystems Inc., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Alfred Romer - http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/m...
Romer’s gap Wikipedia
Mind the gap - Bruno Figueiredo on Unsplash
Uppsala University Greenland expedition - https://www.uu.se/en/news/article/?id...
Kellwasser event Hangenberg event – https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0914000107
Hangenberg Global Devastation Tour – Per Ahlberg.
Brothiolepis Canadensis – Citron - wikipedia
Go for it - Brett Jordan on Unsplash
Marine Biology - Benjamin L. Jones on Unsplash
Geologic time scale - https://timescalefoundation.org/chart...
A fossil Betula leopoldae (birch) leaf from the Early Eocene of Washington state, approximately 49 million years ago – Kevmin – Wikipedia
Fossil trilete spores (blue) and a spore tetrad (green) of Late Silurian origin – Smith609 – Wikipedia
Bryozoan fossils in an Ordovician oil shale from Estonia. Field of view is 15 cm across – Mark A. Wilson – Wikipedia
A large Miocene coprolite from South Carolina, USA – Poozeum - Wikipedia
Conference - Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash