Research Interests

Publications

Career History

Publications

I have published over 100 scientific papers in learned academic journals. Some of the more recent highlights are given below. Click here to visit the research project pages which detail additional papers. Most of the papers listed below are available as pdf files - click on the symbol to download.

Since we published a paper in Science back in 1999, much debate has ensued about how and whether atmospheric CO₂ increased during the mass extinction across the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. Here are a couple of my more recent contributions to the debate:

Beerling, D.J. (2002) Palaeoclimatology. CO₂ and the end-Triassic mass extinction. Nature, 415, 386-387. (130KB)

Beerling, D.J. & Berner, R.A. (2002) Biogeochemical constraints on the Triassic-Jurassic boundary carbon cycle event. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 16, 101-113. (960KB)

My first book is a collaborative venture with Ian Woodward describing our vision of how the terrestrial carbon cycle has changed through geological time.

Beerling, D.J. & Woodward, F.I. (2001) Vegetation and the Terrestrial Carbon Cycle. Modelling the First 400 million years. 405pp. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

You can read the reviews of it by Dennis Baldocchi and Greg Retallack here:

Baldocchi, D. (2000) Modelling plant history. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. (95KB)

Retallack, G. (2002) Book review. Journal of Vegetation Science, 13, 143-144. (28KB)

...... and purchase a copy of it at the Cambridge University Press website here:

http://titles.cambridge.org/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521801966

Measurements on plants grown with CO₂-enrichment, typically by ecologists wanting to know how they might respond to future global change, are very relevant to interpreting the fossil record.

Beerling, D.J. (1998) The future as the key to the past for palaeobotany? Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 13, 311-316. (95KB)

We have investigated one aspect in greater detail - the intriguing observation that plants grown in a high CO₂ environment exhibit increased sensitivity to frosts.

Royer, D.L., Osborne, C.P. & Beerling, D.J. (2002) High CO₂ increases the freezing sensitivity of plants: implications for paleoclimatic reconstructions from fossil floras. Geology, 30 (11), 963-966 (310KB)

Beerling, D.J., Terry, A.C., Hopwood, C. & Osborne, C.P. (2002) Feeling the cold: atmospheric CO₂ enrichment and the frost sensitivity of terrestrial plant foliage. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 182, 3-13. (294KB)

Terry, A.C., Quick, W.P. & Beerling, D.J. (2000) Long-term growth of Ginkgo with CO₂ enrichment increases leaf ice nucleation temperatures and limits recovery of the photosynthetic system from freezing. Plant Physiology, 124, 183-190. (213KB)

Our studies measuring and interpreting stomatal changes in fossil leaves, and stable carbon isotope composition of fossils, have allowed us to extract a range of quantitative information documenting past changes in the operation of the ancient carbon cycle. Recent summaries of this research are given in:

Beerling, D.J. & Royer, D.L. (2002) Reading a CO₂ signal from fossil stomata. New Phytologist, 153, 387-397. (662KB)

Beerling, D.J. & Royer, D.L. (2002) Fossil plants as indicators of the Phanerozoic global carbon cycle. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 30, 527-556. (436KB)

We are also interested in other chemical constituents of the palaeoatmosphere besides CO₂, including both trace gases (**link to project 4***), and atmospheric O₂. Mass balance calculations, incorporating plant isotopic fractionation data from our lab. experiments, suggest atmospheric O₂ levels may have risen to 35% during the Permo-Carboniferous. However, a rise in O₂ above the present-day value of 21% remains hotly debated, despite our recent report showing a major rise in O₂ was encoded into the carbon isotopic composition of fossil plant remains. The publications below deal with these issues.

Beerling, D.J., Lake, J.A., Berner, R.A. et al. (2002) Carbon isotope evidence implying high O₂/CO₂ ratios in the Permo-Carboniferous atmosphere. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 66, in press. (372KB)

Beerling, D.J. & Berner, R.A. (2000) Impact of a Permo-Carboniferous high O₂ event on the terrestrial carbon cycle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 97, 12428-12432. (236KB)

Berner, R.A., Petsch, S.T., Lake, J.A., Beerling, D.J. et al. (2000) Isotope fractionation and atmospheric oxygen: implications for Phanerozoic O₂ evolution. Science, 287, 1630-1633. (96KB)

There are secure marine isotopic data indicate Earth's climate much warmer than now some 50 million years ago. Our recent palaeo-CO₂ reconstruction with fossil leaves indicate high levels of this greenhouse were not responsible.

Royer, D.L., Wing, S.L., Beerling, D.J. et al. (2001) Palaeobotanical evidence for near present-day levels of atmospheric CO₂ during part of the Tertiary. Science, 292, 2310-2313. (201KB)

However, warming at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary when the dinosaurs died out does seem to correlate with high atmospheric CO₂ levels inferred from fossil leaves.

Beerling, D.J., Lomax, B.H., Royer, D.L., Upchurch, G.R. & Kump, L.R. (2002) An atmospheric pCO₂ reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 99, 7836-7840. (178KB)

How quickly could terrestrial vegetation recover from global changes at the K-T boundary due to a massive asteroid impact ?

Lomax, B., Beerling, D., Upchurch, G. & Otto-Bliesner, B. (2001) Rapid (10-yr) recovery of terrestrial productivity in a simulation study of the terminal Cretaceous impact event. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 192, 137-144. (324KB)

What heights could forest trees growing millions of years ago achieve ? How important was the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ ?

Osborne, C.P. & Beerling, D.J. (2002) Sensitivity of tree growth to a high CO₂ environment - consequences for interpreting the characteristics of fossil woods from ancient 'greenhouse' worlds. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 182, 15-29. (518KB)

Forest cover on Antarctica millions of years ago played a key role in allow coal deposits to develop.

Beerling, D.J. (2000) The influence of vegetation cover on soil organic matter preservation in Antarctica during the Mesozoic. Geophysical Research Letters, 27, 253-256.

Rapid global warming 55 million years ago promoted increases in the carbon stored in ancient tropical forests.

Beerling, D.J. (2000) Increased terrestrial carbon storage across the Palaeocene-Eocene boundary. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 161, 395-405. (833KB)

A comprehensive index of publications by the White Rose Palaeobiology Group is available here.

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