Alex Zimmerman

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

This study provides the first focused investigation of rudist bivalves from the Upper Cretaceous of the Gulf Coastal Plain (GCP) in the southern US and previously undescribed specimens from the Flor de Alba Limestone Member of the Pozas Formation in Puerto Rico. Identified rudists from the GCP comprise the Monopleuridae, including Gyropleura , as w...

Characterizing deep-sea coral biodiversity is essential to evaluate the current state of deep-sea ecosystems and to assess vulnerability to anthropogenic threats such as offshore drilling and ocean acidification. Thousands of deep-sea coral records from the past 6 decades are compiled in the publicly accessible NOAA database, but few large-scale an...

The Neognathodus Index (NI) is developed as a primary biostratigraphic indicator for the Desmoinesian Series of the Illinois Basin in Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. It is based on the gradual evolutionary morphotypic variations of P1 elements of named species of Neognathodus Dunn, 1970. The NI analyses and zonations presented herein are construct...

Conodont fossils are highly valuable for Paleozoic biostratigraphy and for interpreting evolutionary change, but identifying and describing conodont morphologies, and characterizing gradual shape variation remain challenging. We used geometric morphometric (GM) analysis to conduct the first landmark-based morphometric analysis of the biostratigraph...

Collections digitization relies increasingly upon computational and data management resources that occasionally exceed the capacity of natural history collections and their managers and curators. Digitization of many tens of thousands of micropaleontological specimen slides, as evidenced by the effort presented here by the Indiana University Paleon...

The challenges presented by data to scientific inquiry and hypothesis testing in an oceanographic setting are not new problems. Indeed, the challenges are at least a century old. The problems are not with the data itself, but rather with the attention to the management of the "data ecology" in the information systems. Data needs to be accessible as...

The major purpose of this study of the conodonts of the Alum Cave Limestone Member of the Dugger Formation in Indiana is to enhance understanding of Desmoinesian (Pennsylvanian) biostratigraphy and paleoenvironments in the Illinois Basin. We collected samples from 25 localities in Gibson, Greene, Knox, Perry, Posey, Sullivan, Vanderburgh, and Warri...

We collected conodonts from black and gray shale lenses containing limestone nodules lying immediately above the Bucktown Coal Member of the Dugger Formation (Pennsylvanian, Desmoinesian) in a Solar Sources Pride Creek pit 2 miles south of Petersburg in Pike County, Indiana. The shale lens varied from approximately 0.6 to 0.92 m in thickness and wa...

The Porvenir Formation consists of marine limestones, gray shales, and sandstones that conformably overlie the Sandia Formation and are overlain with local angular unconformity by the Alamitos Formation in the southeastern part of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico. We collected conodonts from two sections representing 1. the Porvenir Forma...