What Sets Ecosystem Trophic Structure?: Insights From the Application of New Measurements to Vertebrate Fossils
2026 Faculty Research Award
AWARD PERIOD: 2026-2028
Modern marine ecosystems are structured differently from terrestrial ecosystems. While terrestrial food webs often have only three levels—plants, herbivores, and carnivores—marine food webs can have up to five levels, including carnivore-eating-carnivores. It’s unclear whether this is a modern phenomenon, or if ancient terrestrial food webs were similarly tri-layered. Christopher Griffin, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, and Daniel Sigman, Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences, will investigate the structure of terrestrial food webs during the Late Triassic Period (235–201 million years ago), an era known to have had an unusually large number of carnivore species relative to herbivores, similar to the carnivore-dominant food webs of modern marine ecosystems. By analyzing nitrogen isotopes in fossilized teeth, the team will determine how food webs were structured during a 30-million-year window that involved several large climatic shifts and dramatic changes in biodiversity. The study will focus on fossils collected from the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona and several small, newly discovered fossil sites in Texas and will examine teeth from a range of species, including lungfish, sharks, invertebrates, amphibians, crocodilians, and dinosaurs. By untangling food web structure during this unique period, the project will provide insight into how food webs and ecosystems are structured and constrained.
Participating Department
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