Bioturbation

The Droser lab has a long history of working on issues related to bioturbation and the resultant ichnofabric, in particular on the record of bioturbation (mixing of sediment) through time. Work by former Ph.D. student, Lidya Tarhan challenged the long standing paradigm that the advent of bioturbation corresponded with the advent of arthropods and other bilaterians at the base of the Cambrian 545 million years ago to show that, instead, it was protracted for tens of millions of years. This has significant implications for global biogeochemical cycling. More recently we are involved with examining the Cenozoic record of bioturbation through major climate perturbations using core and outcrop data. We are currently analyzing the impact of bioturbation variation on the benthic community, carbon cycling, and fidelity of geochemical records at these impactful events.