Michal Kowalewski
University of Florida, FL·Earth & Environmental Science
When a sea creature dies, how long does its skeleton last? Mollusk shells and sea urchin skeletons, called tests, cover many seafloors and fill the marine fossil record.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
taphonomy
time-averaging
fossilization
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test whether time-averaging, the spread of ages among dead remains found together, is orders of magnitude higher for mollusks than echinoids, by radiocarbon dating about 1,000 specimens with an accelerator mass spectrometer.
- Compare live-dead ratios and whole-to-fragment ratios of mollusks and sea urchins through 45 field surveys at 15 seafloor sites in Florida and the Bahamas.
- Determine whether durability differences between mollusks and echinoids hold across carbonate and sand-and-mud habitats, using surface and buried sediment samples.
More about the research
How quickly they break down affects the carbon cycle, seafloor sediments, the formation of sedimentary rock and the quality of the fossil record. Early evidence suggests a striking contrast. Mollusk shells may last for centuries, while sea urchin tests may survive only months or years.
Why it matters
This is mainly basic science. It would show how differences in shell durability bias the fossil record and limit how finely fossil samples can resolve time. It would also clarify whether shell-producing animals act as carbon sinks or sources and how biogenic sedimentary rocks form. The fast radiocarbon dating strategy could also help other researchers date fossil samples more quickly and efficiently.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Michael Henson
Northern Illinois University, IL·Ecology & Evolution
Identify environmental reservoirs of the DaScPc ciliate parasite through time-series surveys of urchins, macroalgae and corals in the U.S. Virgin Islands, alongside measurements of ocean conditions and host density.
Catherine Davis
North Carolina State University, NC·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure which particle types planktic foraminifera collected off U.S. coasts gather, how quickly they clump them, and how this changes the sinking and carbon export of marine snow, using laboratory cultures.
Philip Novack-Gottshall
Benedictine University, IL·Ecology & Evolution
Test four hypotheses about how ecological diversity differs among marine animal phyla and classes and through Phanerozoic time, using a quantitative life-habit database covering all known marine animal genera.
The school
University of Florida: 65 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 795 research doctorates a year.
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