Speaker:
Professor Mark Williams, University of Leicester
Bio:
Professor of Palaeobiology, University of Leicester
Mark Williams is a Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester and one of the longest serving members of the Anthropocene Working Group. He researches the evolution of the biosphere over geological timescales, and has published several popular science books on this theme, most recently ‘The Cosmic Oasis’.
Mark Williams is a Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester and one of the longest serving members of the Anthropocene Working Group. He researches the evolution of the biosphere over geological timescales, and has published several popular science books on this theme, most recently ‘The Cosmic Oasis’.
Topic:
Date:
8 January 2025
Time:
7:30pm – 9:00pm
Add to your calendar
8 January 2025 19:30
8 January 2025 21:00
Europe/London
Lecture: Professor Mark Williams, University of Leicester
Summary
Humans have modified Earth’s ecosystems for millennia, leaving a fossil signature of landscape change and extinction. More recently, the pace of change has accelerated, with the vast mass of mammals concentrated in people and the animals they consume, for which large areas of the land and seas have been adapted to serve that consumption, whilst deliberately and inadvertently many thousands of non-native species have been moved across the globe. These changes leave a distinctive fossil signature of humanity in the 20th and 21st centuries, one easily traced across all Earth’s time zones from the Pacific to the UK, and signalling a planetary-scale change to the biosphere that may ultimately compare to those of deep geological time.
