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Back to the Future for Paleobiology

Back to the Future for Paleobiology

Howard Falcon Lang

I work at the interface of sedimentology and paleobiology. My research mostly deals with the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems over the past 500 million years. Some recent work has investigated (1) the invasion of land by animals, (2) the rise and fall of the first rainforests, and (3) forest biogeography in the age of the dinosaurs. I’m interested in how past experiments in deep time can inform our understanding of the future evolution of climate and biosphere. Much of my work is done in the field, in the nunataks of Antarctica, the coal mines of the USA, or even in the rainforest of Panama, but I also draw on lab-based and microscopic techniques to elucidate palaeoclimates and ancient ecosystems.

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A Carboniferous lycopsid tree at Joggins, Nova Scotia, Canada Fossil footprints of the earliest reptiles at Grand Anse, New Brunswick, Canada
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Oribatid mite microcoprolites in a Carboniferous tree-fern axis from Bristol, England A Carboniferous permineralised twig from Bute, Scotland

 

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