Research interests - Evolutionary Patterns of Invertebrates Through the Phanerozoic and the Characteristics of Those Who Survive Major Crises in Earth History
What is it that makes certain groups of animals (or for that matter any life forms) robust enough to survive a major crisis in Earth history – such as those that managed to continue living across the Permo-Triassic catastrophe about 250 million years ago, when upwards of 80-90% of all life expire? This is one of the major research interests of Jeffrey Stilwell, whose specialty is the Phylum Mollusca – bivalves, snails, and their kin. Stilwell has either led or participated in a number of remote area expeditions – to such places as Antarctica and India and most recently led a National Geographic Expedition to the Chatham Islands where another “crisis assemblage” is being studied by him and his collegues and students, in detail – a Cretaceous/Tertiary shallow marine assemblage of vertebrates, invertebrates, and associated flora – in an attempt to understand the climatic nd palaeoenvironmental conditions across this boundary in the SW Pacific Basin at a time when the eastern part of Gondwana was still intact and movement of fauna between New Zealand, Australia and Antarctica was still possible. Stilwell is also interested in the history of geology and in public outreach, his editing and reproduction of the first shell book ever published, John Mawe’s The Shell Collector’s Pilot, is just one example |
