A three-year research project funded by NSF will utilize a Geographic Information System (GIS) to spatially and temporally analyze Miocene mammal taxa, localities, and associated data for the western United States. Hypotheses relating to the effect of major physical-environmental perturbations (such as tectonism and climate change) on taxonomic richness will be tested.  Effects of the Miocene perturbations, which took place over a million-year time scale, will be compared to effects of climatic perturbations at the thousand-year scale by utilizing the already existing FAUNMAP database.

The study will also explore how deeply in time some major features of the modern Western U.S. mammal fauna are rooted, notably compositional features such as relative number of species within families, provinciality, and overall diversity within certain regions.

Besides clarifying the role of the physical environment as a motor of evolution, the proposed research is important in: (1) examining the interplay between habitat fragmentation and faunal turnover rates, of interest to conservation biology and the land-management community; and (2) developing databases and other web-based resources for the paleobiological community.