Dr. Fernando M. Archuby,paleontology, CEIDE

Our alumnus who has written a dissertation about " Taphonomy and palaeoecology of benthic macroinvertebrates from the Agua de la Mula Member of the Agrio Formation, Neuquén Basin (Neuquén province, Argentina): sequence stratigraphic significance" at the University of Wuerzburg, Institute of paleontology and who also took part in the 74th annual meeting of the Paleontological Society in Göttingen representing the University of Würzburg is now moving back to his home town La Plata city, where he will be working in a research center called Centro de Estudios Integrales de la Dinámica Exógena (CEIDE) that encompases geology, hydrology, hydrogeology, basin management, paleontology and forest management. The center belongs to Universidad Nacional de La Plata and is placed in La Plata city. In the CEIDE he will investigate on Conservation Paleobiology, a new discipline that seeks for using the long term paleontological information to help on conservation issues.

He describes his research for us:

"I investigate marine benthic ecosystems in the fossil record (benthic ecosystems are those that live in the bottoms of the seas). To obtain evidence to characterize these ecosystems I study fossil remains (shells and shell accumulations) and the rocks or sediments that contain these shells. They can be as old as 130 million years or much younger, including remains of animals that died few days before they are sampled. I intend to understand how ecosystems and the communities they include change along periods of time that exceed the human experience, following changes in abiotic (depth, temperature, oxygen, etc) and biotic agents (e.g. biotic interactions such as predation). The results might be useful to anticipate changes due to current climate change and to focus on more efficient accions on diversity conservation."