Principal Investigator Roger Summons
Project Website http://summons.mit.edu/project/oceanic-anoxic-events-mass-extinctions/
The Summons lab investigates the relationships between extreme environmental change (like greenhouse climates and impact events), global biogeochemical cycles, and biology across major events in Earth history. We address these interactions by analyzing the biomarker and isotopic signatures of marine microorganisms preserved in ancient rocks and sediments, which allow us to reconstruct many aspects of changing environments and biology: ocean temperature, redox conditions, marine productivity, ecological successions of planktonic organisms, carbon and nitrogen cycling, hydrology, and terrestrial inputs to the marine realm.