Upcoming Climate Change: Fossil Record as a Key to Predict Future Biotic Response

Increased global warming is a trend caused as the result of human activity since the mid-20th century. It is proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented and could be analogous to fast climatic changes affecting Earth’s ecosystems in its geological past. It is based on the general assumption that the contemporary trend of global warming has the potential to replace contemporary biological ecosystems with ones that lack modern analogies, leaving ecologists with no observational basis to predict future biotic effects. The fossil record has the significant advantage of containing the representation of a long time series of environmental changes that can help scientists predict future environmental responses to modern changes. Studies of the fossil record can also provide detailed information on the rate of ecological change and pinpoint the factors behind these changes. Answers to the question of how modern ecosystems will react to climate change can be found through the analysis of fossil biotic assemblages performed with appropriate data resolution and by selecting the appropriate geological formations. Thus, to paraphrase the principle of uniformitarianism it can be concluded that by performing high-resolution geological studies of the past, we gain insight into the future by being able to understand the effects of contemporary environmental changes and learn how Earth ecosystems have responded to those changes.

Taking into account these assumptions, this Research Topic aims to address contemporary climate change by taking up the problem of the geologic record of climatic oscillations leading to “greenhouse” conditions during the Phanerozoic. We welcome research using all types of fossils and all traces of biological activity in the geological record. Palaeoecological research plays a very important role in predicting the effects of contemporary climate change on global warming, as well as its probable direction, duration, and long-lasting consequences. The future effects of the present-day biotic changes that we observe in modern ecosystems, cannot be predicted only by the observations of contemporary organisms, because they happened on a scale of thousands and millions of years. The fossil record also has a significant advantage, as it shows the response of ecosystems to changes occurring without human influence. From the fossil record, we can also read how and when the environments have the natural potential to return to their initial state. We hope that articles in this Research Topic will contribute to the understanding and dissemination of knowledge about contemporary climate change on a global scale and its consequences.

In this Research Topic, we welcome a broad spectrum of contributions that address, but are not limited to:
• Fossil biotic assemblages that respond to the changing conditions of the marine and terrestrial environments due to climate oscillations;
• Causes of the development of these ecological conditions in relation to multi-decadal and millennial climate oscillations especially in marine environments that could lead to oceanic anoxic events (OAEs) and periods with well-oxygenated water column in a global scale.