This U.S. Mexico Planning Visit proposal will support a team of four U.S. paleontologists, including specialists with background in isotope geochemistry, paleoecology, undergraduate research, and stratigraphy, under the direction of Dr. Gregory Herbert and Peter Harries of the University of South Florida on a 14 day planning visit to Mexico. The primary goal of the visit is to develop a broad collaborative research and education partnership with colleagues in that country to study the evolution of marine invertebrate biotas in the western Gulf of Mexico during the Neogene. The researchers will meet with Dr. Francisco Vera Vega, a paleontologist with the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Instituto de Geologia (UNAM), to identify field sites in Chiapas and Veracruz that will best support the team's history of multidisciplinary approach to research and graduate and undergraduate education. The team also plans to survey the invertebrate paleontology collections of the Coleccion Nacional de Paleontologia (UNAM) and the Instituto de Historia Natural y Ecologia de Chiapas to determine whether and how these important collections can best be incorporated into future work. The investigators plan to develop collaborative proposals in Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology and, if possible, Research Experiences for Undergraduates program as outcomes of this visit.
The research outcomes of this visit should help to increase our understanding of biotic changes during one of the most dramatic episodes of climatic and oceanographic change in recent Earth history, as well as help educate the next generation of paleontologists.
