See more from this Division: Topical Sessions
See more from this Session: Quantifying the Early Evolution of Life: Numerical Approaches to the Evaluation of Precambrian-Cambrian Animals and Ecosystems
Abstract:
The study of early life and its evolution became decidedly more interdisciplinary and quantitative in the past three decades. This was facilitated by advances in technology, instrumentation, communication, and software engineering. Also contributing were developments in allied fields, growing databases, and the greater visibility and the rapidly expanding number of researchers interested in early life and the derived field of astrobiology. Lessons learned in Precambrian paleontology and its methodologies are eminently applicable to the latter, and vice versa.
Attributes of Precambrian fossils of all categories (megafossils, microfossils, chemofossils, trace fossils, stromatolites, and dubiofossils) are amenable to quantification. Like ecological niches for organisms, there are numerous unexplored possibilities for the mathematically inclined to work on aspects related to ancient life, though one must remember to look beyond just the numbers.
See more from this Division: Topical Sessions
See more from this Session: Quantifying the Early Evolution of Life: Numerical Approaches to the Evaluation of Precambrian-Cambrian Animals and Ecosystems