Research
Changing Environments, Biotas and Ecosystems Through Time, Emphasizing the Proterozoic Eon (2500-545 million ybp) and the Late Mesozoic to mid-Cenozoic Eras (120-30 million ybp)
Patricia Vickers-Rich’s research centers on understanding the changes in the biota of Earth during the late Proterozoic, at a time when complex animals first appeared and the major animal phyla were differentiating. Her studies look for correlations between such biotic change, ocean chemistry, climate and plate tectonic effects on continental relationships and ocean basin geography. Her work also on the development of the modern Australian biota involves an understanding of its origins in the late Mesozoic and Cenozoic, noting the events over the past 150 million years, where Australia at first lay alongside Antarctica far south of its present position, then severed its ties and drifted in isolation north from its polar and cool temperate position and now into the arid horse latitudes and tropics. Her field areas include SW Africa (particularly Namibia in a joint program with the Namibian Geological Survey), the Eastern European Platform including the White Sea and Siberia (in conjuncion with the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences), NW Argentina and the Flinders Range of South Australia (with the South Australian Museum). She also works with Tom Rich (Museum Victoria) on the polar biotas of Southern Australia of Early Cretaceous age and is involved in public science education, bringing cutting edge science into primary and secondary schools, refugee camps in destabilized areas of the world. She is the Founding Director of the Monash Science Centre on the Clayton campus of Monash University.
Research Projects
Was there an unusual environment with equally remarkable inhabitants in Early Cretaceous southeast Australia?
Prof. P. Vickers-Rich (Chief Investigator), Dr T. Rich, L. Kool, N. van Klaveren, D. Pickering
Funding for 2006: $111,520 (ARC Discovery Project)
After more than two decades of effort, there is strong evidence that Early Cretaceous southeastern Australia was inhabited by a remarkably diverse polar terrestrial vertebrate fauna adapted to the coldest environment known to have existed anywhere in the late Mesozoic. In this unusual terrestrial habitat for that time, temnospondyl amphibians and allosaurid dinosaurs survived long after becoming extinct elsewhere. Here, too, are found what may be the oldest known and yet remarkably advanced placental mammals, the group to which we belong. To further corroborate or refute these hypotheses, some of which are highly contentions, is the aim of this project.
Professor P. Vickers-Rich, Prof. M. Fedonkin (Chief Investigator), Dr J. Gehling, Dr F. Bierlein
Funding for 2006: $14,739 (IGCP-UNESCO)
As so eloquently pointed out in the introduction to IGCP Project 478 (led by Dr Claudio Gauchier from Uruguay) the Proterozoic and early Phanerozoic, especially “the Neoproterozoic-Early Palaeozoic saw the occurrence of some of the most significant events in Earth history” which included a glaciation on a global scale, dramatic changes in the composition of oceans and atmosphere, marked changes in continental configuration and, from the point of view of this IGCP project (IGCP493) the appearance and great increase in biodiversity of metazoans culminating in the first occurrence of a variety of hard tissue skeletons that marks the end of the Proterozoic and beginning of the Phanerozoic. |
