Dr. William Ausich, Ohio State University

My research:

My research focuses on the evolution, paleoecology, paleobiology, and evolutionary paleoecology of crinoids and the assembly of Paleozoic sea floor communities. Paleozoic crinoids can be grouped into three Evolutionary Faunas with the transitions between them being the Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction and a middle Mississippian rapid faunal turnover. Most of my ongoing work is concentrated on these two macroevolutionary events. The work on the Ordovician-Silurian includes systematics of Ordovician and Silurian crinoids from Anticosti Island, Quebec, origination and extinction rates, and understanding the global changes in crinoid faunas through a mass extinction interval. The end-Ordovician mass extinction was the second most devastating extinction in the marine ecosystem, and it was caused by global climate change that let to a continental glaciation. Understanding this event in detail will help to develop a framework within which to understand the global biodiversity changes occurring on Earth today. Rather than describing new taxa, for the Mississippian we are attempting to understand the innumerable species mostly described in the late 19th century, including the placement of all known Mississipian crinoids around the globe into an objectively defined genus and the sedimentologic and stratigraphic context of their occurrences. This is prerequisite to a full understanding of this macroevolutionary event. I am also working on the revision to the crinoid Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology.

Working with the CMC Collections:

The Cincinnati Museum Center houses a large portion of the S. A. Miller and W. F. E. Gurley crinoid collection. These two paleontologists described many Cincinnatian fossils during the late 19th century, and they were responsible for the description of many, many Mississippian crinoid species. My present work at the CMC has been with these Mississippian crinoids to determine their proper generic assignment and the stratigraphic unit from which they were collected.

Thursday, August 7, 2008