Program Geobiology
Members Shucheng Xie
Abstract
The geobiology team of the China University of Geosciences is forged during a long-term disciplinary development from paleontology to biogeology and then to geobiology. The team has focused on geobiology through its participation on several large research projects. They published many key collaborative papers on faunal mass extinctions, microbes and oceanic chemistry in several critical periods in Earth history. These include key advances in estimating the paleotemperatures of 252 million years ago, proposition of a new model of Neoproterozoic sulfide ocean, modification of oceanic chemistry models in some critical periods, establishment of the episodic pattern of Permian-Triassic mass extinction, reconstruction of the recovery process of oceanic ecosystem, introducing the sensitive responses of microbes to biotic crisis and the associated marine environments and recognitions of a series of microbial proxies for the terrestrial environmental changes. These high-profile researches have gained international recognitions and were published in top journals such as Science and Nature (3 articles), Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications (3 articles) and Geology (7 articles) and were highly commented and reviewed in Science and Nature Geoscience. These achievements conducted by the team members were awarded twice national prizes and once as one of the ten progresses of national science and technology of China. The team will explore the responses and feedbacks of microbes and faunas to the spatial heterogeneity of oceanic chemistry during Early Triassic and Mesoproterozoic.
