This award provides support for a two year cooperative research project between a group from the Department of Geology and Geophysics, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, led by Professor Joseph E Hazel, and a group from the Institute of Geosciences, Shizuoka University, Japan, led by Professor Noriyuki Ikeya. The objectives of the project are to conduct taxonomic and zoogeographic studies of temperature- sensitive circumpolar ostracode and molluscan clades for application to the study of Pilocene climatic changes. Paleontologic analysis of climatically sensitive organisms is a valuable tool for quantitative study of paleoclimatic change. This project will investigate molluscs and ostracodes from middle and high latitude regions of Japan, Alaska, and eastern North America during the Pilocene, when a global climatic change occurred about 3.0 million years ago. Taxonomic and zoogeographic study of diagnostic species will be applied to shallow marine paleoclimatology of the North Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic Oceans before, during and after this climatic deterioration began. Molluscs and ostracodes have potential for reconstructing marine environments in general and are of particular value in cold shallow marine realms where plantik organisms are rare or absent. There application to paleoclimatology has been limited however by inadequate taxonomic, ecologic and zoographic study of circumpolar Arctic/Subarctic species. This project aims to overcome these limitations, and make molluscs and ostracodes more applicable to shallow marine paleoclimatology. Both the US and the Japanese researchers involved in the project have good track records in their fields, particularly in the areas of ostracode taxonomy and the paleoclimatic inferences that can be drawn from changes in assemblages through time. This project should hopefully lead to a better understanding of climatic history in high latitudes, which should lead to a better understanding of climatic processes in general.
