T99 Advances in Computational Paleobiology: Reshaping Our Understanding of the Fossil Record

Monday, 23 October 2017
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 608

TACKLING CAUSALITY IN PALEONTOLOGY WITHOUT A TIME MACHINE

Paper number: T99-10
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:15 AM – 10:30 AM

Authors

Abstract

There are pervasive, general morphological, taxonomic and ecological trends, as well as clade-specific dynamics of waxing and waning in the fossil record. Patterns of speciation, origination and diversification and morphological evolution are being documented with better models and ever-increasing amounts of data. However, it is very challenging to attribute these patterns to causes and mechanisms, beyond verbal hypotheses and simple correlational models. Here, I give a very brief overview of methods that have been use in paleontology to tackle (Granger) causality, including Information Transfer, Convergent Cross Mapping and linear Stochastic Differential Equations. I present case studies based on linear SDEs and discuss current and future challenges in tackling causality without a time machine.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 49, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2017AM-296302

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