Collaborative Research: Understanding the evolution of high-latitude Permo-Triassic paleoenvironments and their vertebrate communities

This project will advance our understanding of Antarctic life during the Permian and Triassic. We will apply an interdisciplinary approach to address relationships between environmental change, faunal composition, and biogeographic patterns in the context of the high-latitude strata preserved in the Buckley and Fremouw formations in the Shackleton Glacier region. We will use multiple types of data to assess paleoenvironment, including: 1) paleosol morphology; 2) paleosol geochemistry; 3) pedogenic organic matter; and 4) fossil wood chronology and stable isotopes. The Fremouw Formation of Antarctica preserves the highest paleolatitude tetrapod fauna of the entire Triassic (~70° S) and thus has the potential to shed important light on the evolution of polar life during the early Mesozoic. We will collect new fossils from known localities to understand the relationship between Antarctic and southern African tetrapod faunas. Furthermore, we will refine the stratigraphic, sedimentological, and geochronological framework for these Mesozoic faunas, which will include using U/Pb detrital zircon dating to provide the first dates for these vertebrate assemblages. In the lab, we will examine the biology of Triassic vertebrates from Antarctica by comparing their bone and tusk histology to conspecifics from lower paleolatitudes. In addition, we will test Bergmann’s Rule with six species (viz. Lystrosaurus curvatus, L. maccaigi, L. murrayi, Prolacerta broomi, Procolophon trigoniceps, and Thrinaxodon liorhinus). The Early Triassic presents a unique opportunity to perform such investigations as there is no other geologic interval in which species occurring in Antarctica can be compared to conspecifics across a range of paleolatitudes.