Robert G. Jenkins -Paleontologist

I'm Robert G. Jenkins, and I'm working on the evolution chemosynthetic communities, the strange deep-sea animals which depend for their continued existence on chemosynthetic bacteria, and are found around methane-seeps, hydrothermal vents and any other areas where the bottom water is enriched with reduced compounds such as methane and hydrogen sulfide.

Robert G. Jenkins

Research Field

Reconstruction of an Ancient Chemosynthetic Ecosystem

This is my main topic. A chemosynthetic ecosystem is an ecosystem which depends upon chemosynthetic primary producers. This kind of ecosystem is usually located in areas where the bottom water is enriched with sulfide and methane, such as methane seeps, hydrothermal vents, whale carcasses, sunken drift wood and even the rotting cargo of a sunken ship. Macro-organisms in the ecosystem are faced with the serious problem of how to survive in an environment with a high content of toxic hydrogen sulfide.

Acharax from Late Cretaceous methane-seep deposit in Hokkaido, Japan

My ultimate aim is to understand how these evolve through the geological time in such extreme environments.

read more>>

Publications

Contact

Links

What's NEW?

2007.2. Renew the web page

About LINK

This page is link free, but please link to top page as "http://www.paleo-fossil.com/~robergj/index-e.html".