Jonathan Payne
Dorrell William Kirby Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Biology
Research
My research group studies the relationship between environmental change and biological evolution in the fossil record. The primary focus of my research group is on understanding the causes of mass extinctions and the processes that control subsequent recovery of biodiversity and global ecosystems. We are working to constrain the causes of the end-Permian and end-Triassic mass extinctions using high-resolution sedimentary, geochemical, and paleontological records developed from carbonate platform sediments in China, Italy, Turkey, and Japan. We are also using global data on fossil occurrence patterns and body sizes to study longer-term connections between environmental change and biological evolution, with a focus on extinction selectivity and body size evolution.
Teaching
I teach courses for undergraduates in historical geology and invertebrate paleobiology and courses for graduate students in carbonate sedimentology, geobiology, and paleobiology.