Melissa I. Pardi
Society faces huge challenges that include coping, or mitigating, climate change and biodiversity loss. The scope of these problems is immense, with long-term, global consequences. The fossil record provides an unparalleled opportunity to provide insights essential for modern conservation efforts. Paleoecology is a topical field of study; for example, the IPCC now includes paleontological perspectives on mitigating future climate change. I am a conservation paleoecologist who uses a historical perspective to investigate the influence of changing environments on: range dynamics and biogeography, interactions within communities, and realized niches.While I have worked on everything from the modern to deep time, the focus of my work is on the late Quaternary and the consequences of the end Pleistocene extinction.
