In the mid-Cretaceous, Earth entered a period of warming so severe that temperate rainforests flourished at the South Pole. These environmental and climatic disruptions mirror many of our modern challenges, including rapid increases in atmospheric CO2, sea-level rise, habitat fragmentation, de-oxygenation of the oceans, and biodiversity loss. Greenhouse gas levels and temperature rise during the mid-Cretaceous were on the scale that we are projected to experience during the next few centuries. Because of this, our work on the mid-Cretaceous provides key data for predicting the future impacts of human-induced climate change. 

 

The National Science Foundation’s Frontier Research in Earth Science program is currently funding the Zanno Lab as part of a 5-year, multidisciplinary alliance to explore these trends on what is now the North American continent. Together, our research is testing whether the restructuring of ecosystems in North America during the mid-Cretaceous, including localized extinctions of dinosaurs, can be quantitatively linked to the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum.