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Projects

 

• Late Cretaceous platy limestones in Northeastern Mexico show all attributes of conservation lagerstätte including soft body preservation of fishes and reptiles. The formation of these ssediments is linked to oceanic anoxic events (OAEs). (German)

 

• Mesozoic marine reptiles are currently examined at Concentration-Lagerstätte in Gomez Farias (Coahuila, NE-Mexico, Tithonian) and Torres del Paine National Park (South Chile, Lower Cretaceous). (German)

 

• The giant Pliosaur called Monster of Aramberri. which has been discovered in the Sierra Madre Oriental (NE-Mexico) in 1985 is being excavated since 2000. Research is still ongoing. (German)

 

• Compared to North American excavation sites Northeastern Mexican dinosaurs are relatively little known. Tracks (footprints) and discoveries of skeletons of at least 15 specimen are currently examined in a new locality in Coahuila (Campanian, Upper Cretaceous). (German)

 

• The mass extinction towards the end of the Cretaceous period has been a gradual process for numerous groups of organisms and started well before the KT-boundary, with complex reasons. The well known Chicxulub asteroid impact structure in Yucatan stands most probably for an impact before the actual KT-boundary. (German)

 

• Underwater caves (Cenotes) on Yucatan peninsula (South Mexico) contain extensive animal as well as human skeletal material dating back to the transition between Pleistocene and Holocene. We examine those findings and interpret environmental changes at this time. (German)

 

• Palaeobiology and Palaeoecology of Cretaceous reefal ecosystems. The use of high-resolution, 3D-reconstructions based on grinding tomography allows detailed insight into Palaeoenvironments, population dynamics and reproduction patterns of rudist ecosystems on both sides of the Atlantic ocean.

 

• Regional geology and tectonics. Tectonics of the Upper Rhine Graben and its relationship to inherited crustal structures. Structural evolution of the Variscan basement of central Europe. Seismic modelling of the Vrancea subduction zone (Romania). Regional and neotectonics of the Eastern Carpathians.

 

• Trilobites, Biostratigraphy and Palaeoenvironments of the Middle Cambrian Manuels River Formation at its Type Locality along Manuels River, Conception Bay South, Newfoundland, Canada

 

• Museographic outreach work. We are in cooperation with Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde in Karlsruhe and museums in Mexico, where our discoveries are constantly presented to the public. (German)

 

• Systematics and biostratigraphy of Upper Cretaceous ammonites of Brazil. Emphasis is on the faunas of the Sergipe Basin in north-eastern Brazil.

 

• Systematics and biostratigraphy of Lower Cretaceous ammonites of the Sergipe Basin, north-eastern Brazil.

 

• Systematics and biostratigraphy of Cretaceous inoceramid bivalves of the Sergipe Basin, north-eastern Brazil.

 

• Systematics, ecology and biogeography of Cretaceous marine bivalves of north-eastern Brazil. Emphasis is on the faunas of the Sergipe Basin.

 

• Systematics of Cretaceous marine gastropods of the Sergipe Basin, north-eastern Brazil.

 

• Dating of the earliest connections between the North and South Atlantic oceans. Based primarily on biogeographic analysis of the Aptian–Albian ammonites of north-eastern Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.

 

• Aptian palaeoceanography and palaeoclimatology of the South Atlantic region. Based mainly on palynomorph analyses.

 

• A three-fold Cretaceous. Analysis of the traditional division of the Cretaceous System into two series in view of the steadily increasing use of a middle Cretaceous series.

 

• Fossilium Catalogus: Upper Cretaceous Ammonites. Revision of Diener 1925: Fossilium Catalogus: Ammonoidea neocretacea.