Paleontology & Paleobiology

To understand the present and predict the future we need to learn from the past. Ancient tree fossils from a higher-carbon period millions of years ago may help scientists predict how forests will respond to future climates. Similarly, the remains of corals, sponges, snails, and sharks just a few thousand or hundred years old can help reconstruct what tropical reef ecosystems were like before humans — and perhaps aid the conservation of these radically altered ecosystems. Our work at Stanford occurs across multiple time scales, from the oldest fossils in the Proterozoic to modern global change.