The “Ecology of the past” blog is run by William Gosling and contains content from people associated with his scientific research. The research presented in the blog is centered on trying to place modern environments in to context. Consequently we spend a lot of time thinking about the modern environment and asking the question: “How did we get here?”

Example of what we are interested in: Clearance of the biodiverse cloud forest on the eastern Andean flank is underway; but how and when did this first occur, how resilient are these ecosystems to change?
To help us answer scientific question regarding how the planet came to be as it is today we look at evidence for change in the past from the fossil record, and try to understand better the environment around us. To find out more about the projects and techniques employed read on…