Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Old World monkey skulls shed light on brain evolution

The findings may provide insights into how the brain evolves during periods of significant climate change.

Thirty million years ago, the landscapes of northern Africa underwent a transformation. Dense, leafy canopies yielded to grassy savannas due to droughts, temperature fluctuations, and a decline in atmospheric carbon dioxide. As the environment changed, so did the animals that called it home.
In a recent publication in the Journal of Mammalian Evolution, Alannah Pearson, a doctoral candidate at the Australian National University, and David Polly explored the case of one such family: Cercopithecidae, or Old World monkeys. These primates are named for the geographic regions they once inhabited: stretches of Africa, Asia, and Southern Europe formerly called the ‘Old World’ by European colonizers. The researchers found that the temporal lobe of the brain, responsible for functions such as facial recognition and language, increased in size in these monkeys at key stages between 30 to 40 million years ago.

First publication funded by the Lee J. Suttner Professorship identifies cratonic basins as barrier to continental sediment transport

Assistant Professor Andrea Stevens Goddard’s group recently published a paper entitled “Cratonic basins as effective sediment barriers in continent‑scale sediment routing systems of Paleozoic North America” in the prestigious journal Nature Scientific Reports (vol. 13, article number 11126, published July 10th, 2023).
The research by Andrea, her former postdoc Olivia Thurston (now a Visiting Assistant Professor at Norwich University) and undergraduate student Jack Stewart (BSc 2023, now a geologist at Quantum XL) was funded in part by the Lee J. Suttner Professorship and is the first publication supported by this endowment.
The study used provenance data from cratonic basins in North America to investigate sediment routing systems in the midcontinent throughout the Paleozoic and discovered that cratonic basins serve as effective sediment barriers that prevent mixing within and across basins from tens to hundreds of millions of years.

McCormick’s Creek tornado aftermath ‘tree throw’ and its effect on soil

After a tornado leveled trees in a south-central Indiana state park last year, an Indiana University professor began studying the forever-changed forests to conduct first-of-its-kind research on natural disasters’ impact on the environment.

Quoting IU News: “On the evening of March 31, 2023, McCormick’s Creek State Park in Spencer, Indiana, was hit by an EF-3 tornado hurling 138 mph winds. More than 280 acres of the 1,961-acre park were seriously damaged, and two people died in the park’s campground. Brian Yanites, an associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington, drove to the park and saw hundreds of destroyed trees.
Brian Yanites is an Associate Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. Yanites, who studies how the Earth’s surface and topography are shaped by atmospheric and geologic processes, and his colleague Doug Edmonds had just been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a process for mapping tree throw, or the deep depressions made in soil once a tree is uprooted by extreme atmospheric events, and to investigate the implications it has on the surrounding soil and biosphere. What happened at McCormick’s Creek State Park would give them an important opportunity to do so.”

IU researcher studies carbon-trapping mineral systems

Quoting Environmental Resilience Institute News: “An Indiana University researcher is investigating critical geochemical processes that trap carbon dioxide in rock to better predict the potential for atmospheric carbon removal and storage at scale.
‘It’s become clear that we must do more than just reduce global emissions,’ said Chen Zhu, an affiliate of the IU Environmental Resilience Institute. ‘No current technologies, however, have demonstrated the ability to capture and store CO₂ at the necessary gigaton scale, though several show promise. New insight into the chemical processes that dictate CO₂ mineralization could help accelerate the development of these technologies to meet society’s urgent need.’”