Sara Pruss on the First Reef Builders

About this episode

Sara Pruss discusses the role of archaeocyaths in early reef building and their impact on animal diversity during the Cambrian period.

The first multicellular animals to build reefs lived in the Early Cambrian around the time of the Cambrian explosion. They were sponges called archaeocyaths. In the podcast, Sara Pruss suggests that the rise of the archaeocyaths fostered an increase in animal diversity. But they were relatively short-lived, and when they died out in the Middle Cambrian, the diversity declined. Over geological time, reef-building organisms appear and disappear again and again until the corals we have today appeared in the Middle Triassic, about 240 million years ago. Pruss is currently trying to understand why reefs are such a persistent feature of the geological record, despite the environmental stresses imposed on them. She is a Professor of Geosciences at Smith College.

People in this episode

Host: Oliver Strimpel

Guest: Sara Pruss

Topics covered

• reef builders
• Cambrian explosion
• archaeocyaths
• animal diversity
• geological record
• environmental stresses

Keywords

• Cambrian
• archaeocyaths
• reef building
• animal diversity
• geological history
• Smith College

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Smith College

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