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While the Stony Brook Vertebrate Fossil Preparation Lab prepares fossils from many areas in the world (green dots  ), three
major initiatives (red stars  ) are responsible for the majority of the work undertaken.
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STONY BROOK PROJECT
LEADERS: Dr. David Krause and
Dr. Catherine Forster
The face of the Earth changed greatly during the Late Jurassic and Cretaceous. It is
during this interval that the southern supercontinent Gondwana fragmented into
isolated landmasses, with dramatic consequences for the associated terrestrial and
freshwater vertebrate fauna. Reconstructions of the timing and sequence of this
fragmentation are based almost entirely on geophysical evidence and remain poorly
tested paleontologically. When, how, and from where the ancestors of the extant
vertebrates of Madagascar arrived on the island remain among the most intriguing
questions of natural history.
The Mahajanga Basin Project was initiated in 1993 and is conducted jointly by
paleontologists from Stony Brook University and the University of Antananarivo
in Madagascar. Discoveries in the Mahajanga Basin of northwestern Madagascar
have uncovered some of the most complete and scientifically significant specimens
of Late Cretaceous vertebrate animals in the world, including specimens of fishes,
frogs, turtles, lizards, snakes, crocodyliforms, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals.
Research on these discoveries has provided important information on the anatomy
and relationships of many animals, documentation of the geological structure and
history of the basin, key insights into the biogeographic origins of vertebrate
faunas on the island, and crucial new implications for the plate tectonic history
of Gondwana during the Mesozoic Era.
Field work has been funded by the National
Science Foundation and the National
Geographic Society.
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STONY BROOK PROJECT LEADER: Dr.
Maureen O'Leary
The Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (65 million years ago) represents one of the
five largest mass extinction events in Earth history. This extinction event
marks a transition point when dinosaurs (other than birds)
became extinct and modern orders of mammals first appeared. Identifying
geological sections from various continents to which vertebrate fossils
can be tied is very important for understanding which species of vertebrates
went extinct and which survived this extinction event. Mali is one of several
countries in the modern Sahara desert that has exposures of rock formations
left by shallow seaways that existed before and which survived.
Current research focuses on understanding vertebrate evolution across the
Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in southern West Africa. Finding the remains of
species that lived within and along this ancient seaway, including the extinct
relatives of modern-day mammals, is of continued interest for
Dr. O'Leary and her team.
Explorations of rocks from the Taoudenit and Iullemeden Basins in Mali
began in 1999, and have resulted in the discovery of dinosaurs,
fossil forests, invertebrates, fishes, turtles, and crocodiles. Dr. O'Leary
and other researchers from the Unites States work in collaboration with the Centre
Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique in the Republic of Mali.
Field work has been funded by the Saurus Institute, the Cranbrook Institute of
Science, the L. S. B.
Leakey Foundation, and the National Geographic Society.
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STONY BROOK PROJECT LEADERS: Doug Boyer, Dr. David Krause
In the ten million years following the extinction of dinosaurs, during the
Paleocene epoch (ca. 65-55 mya), mammals underwent a major adaptive radiation
and became dominant land animals. A large-scale turnover in mammalian faunas,
among the most significant during the Early Cenozoic, occurred from the middle
Paleocene to the late Paleocene. Despite the fact that almost one-half of the
known orders of Cenozoic mammals arose in the Paleocene, less is known about
composition and diversity of mammalian faunas during this time than any of
the later epochs.
The eastern Crazy Mountains Basin of south-central
Montana contains the best-known sequence of middle-to-late Paleocene
localities for fossil mammals in the world. Researchers
from Stony Brook University, the University of Michigan, and elsewhere
have conducted periodic field expeditions to the Crazy Mountains Basin for decades. Much of
the large collection previously amassed by Stony Brook University field
crews in the 1980s remains to be described and
employed in analyses to test hypotheses of faunal and climatic change.
Additionally, a freshwater limestone locality known for its remarkable
preservation of small mammal skeletons was relocated in 2002, promising
to yield new material otherwise unavailable from the Paleocene of North America.
Field work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and
the Geological Society of America.
Stony Brook University
Department of Anatomical Sciences
HSC T8 031
Stony Brook, NY 11794
(631) 444-3171
e-mail inquiries: jgroenke@notes.cc.sunysb.edu
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