“Looking Forward by Looking Back: What Does the Fossil Record Say About Climate Change?”

Evidence
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
11:00 – 11:50 am EDT
RECORDING AVAILABLE

Scott Wing
Curator of Fossil Plants, Department of Paleobiology
National Museum of Natural History

What does the fossil record tell us about past changes in climate and the effects on plants and animals? Back from his most recent fieldwork in Wyoming, Scott Wing will share with us the exciting story of his discoveries about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a period over 55 million years ago when the average temperature of Earth warmed nine degrees in a geological instant. Wing’s work on plant fossils shows that the rapid warming was accompanied by decreasing rainfall and a radical shift in where plants lived. We will discuss the many parallels between this ancient episode and predicted future climate change.

Posted in: Featured, Presentations on September 24th by Conference Coordinators

4 Comments

Comment by Carla Bitter — September 30, 2009 @ 11:54 am

Scott Wing’s work and other NMNH science research is shared through professional presentations and science publications, but also through our museum’s exhibits. Looking into the past, gathering research information, working through scientific understanding and being able to communicate to our visitors through websites, exhibits, collections and objects is part of the shared excitement a grand, public research and collections based museum. As we enter the Anthrocene the ways of communicating science seem limitless!

[Reply]
Scott Wing Reply:
September 30th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Just a quick comment to get the spelling: Anthropocene.

[Reply]
Comment by Carla Bitter — September 30, 2009 @ 7:42 pm

Anthropocene. Thanks so much for the correction Scott. Wonderful and exciting presentation too.

[Reply]
Comment by Jawad — July 23, 2011 @ 9:03 am

Dear Scott
How can we find Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum in biostratigraphic and sequence stratigraphic records?

[Reply]