Paul Smith

Biography

Invertebrate Paleontology, Stratigraphy; Ph.D. (McMaster University) Invertebrate Paleontology, Stratigraphy; Ph.D. (McMaster University)

Research Interest

By the close of the Paleozoic, the earth`s continents were amalgamated into the supercontinent Pangaea. By the end of the Triassic, Pangaea was beginning to break apart once more through rifting and drifting that ultimately led to the formation of the Atlantic Ocean. This reconfiguration of the biosphere`s substrate had a profound influence on the evolution of life and global diversity. I have been involved in studying the formation of a tropical seaway that I named the Hispanic Corridor which during the course of the Early and Middle Jurassic linked the Tethyan Ocean to the eastern Pacific. My work suggests that the seaway initially acted as a filter allowing the selective dispersal of organisms. I am currently collaborating with a group of geologists in China attempting to improve our biogeographic database for a critically important region, the eastern portal of Tethys. Biogeography and terrane displacement: Western North America consists of a collage of terranes whose origins and accretion to the continent are still the subject of debate. Patterns of endemism and diversity in ammonites and other molluscs appear to correlate well with paleolatitude in most parts of the world but in Canada and the United States the patterns are disrupted along the terrane boundaries. Restoring this biogeographic jigsaw puzzle has allowed us to place constraints upon tectonic models of terrane history. For example, quantitative analyses of biogeographic data using Monte Carlo methods indicate that the three main terranes that now form western Canada were already in the northeast Pacific by the Early Jurassic. This has been of particular help in resolving the north vs. south hemisphere ambiguity that is inherent in paleomagnetic data.