All of my research encompasses the broader them of early complex life in the marine realm from the Ediacaran to early Paleozoic periods. Understanding the ecologies and complex processes that make up the life modes of these organisms can help us understand how organisms today are impacted by unprecedented changing and/or extreme conditions that may not have been so unfamiliar to our deep time friends.

Bioturbation, or the mixing of sediment by burrowing organisms, is a metabolically demanding mechanism that may have significant impacts on modern seafloor communities.

The strata of the Cambrian period are characterized by low and variable bioturbation intensities, although examples of high bioturbation intensities are observed in the sedimentological record. This phenomenon raises many questions for geobiologists, like myself, on why bioturbation lagged behind other ecological phenomena of the early Paleozoic if intensive mixing was possible, and the role of the environment and lithofacies on the patterns we are able to observe.