63 Crossing park boundaries in the study of ancient ecosystems

Introduction National park units have at times been referred to as “ecological islands.” More recently, such units have begun to be viewed as ecological mosaics rather than separate island units as managers of publicly owned, federally managed lands have increasingly gained an appreciation for park boundaries and their relationships to particular biological issues. It is often apparent to these managers that individual park boundaries may not fully encompass appropriate habitat areas for managing biological resources. As a result, partnerships have been sought within and between land management agencies to best accommodate the needs of these biological resources. In order to understand the natural world of today, one must examine the past. Studies such as those discussed below show that fossils are more than oddities of the rock record; they represent the record of life that has evolved on this planet. They are the means to test the scale and robustness of ecological principles observed in the modern world. Given the human proclivity for habitat manipulation, understanding ecological principles in geologic time can only be insightful. Linking national park units is ideal for providing insights into ancient ecosystems because such units contain some of the most productive fossil-bearing rocks in North America. Traditionally, geologic—and by extension paleontologic—resources have been treated as isolated phenomena. For example, Fossil Butte National Monument contains a remarkably rich sequence of rocks containing some of the most spectacular fossil fish from the Eocene (58 to 36 million years ago) found anywhere in the world. However, this resource is often viewed as unique without regard to how the large fossil lake containing these fish relates to the contemporary environment of its time. A notable exception is the Morrison Formation ecosystem project, a multi-year ancient ecosystem study sponsored by the National Park Service (NPS), that focused on the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation ecosystem. We briefly summarize basic results from one component of this study focused on the dominant group of vertebrates from the terrestrial ecosystem, the sauropod dinosaurs. This summary of data on sauropods illustrates the advantages of examining fossil resources in context beyond individual park boundaries. Lastly, we suggest an even larger-scale project that would minimally tie together NPS units from near the Arctic Circle (Denali National Park and Preserve and Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve) all the way to the Rio Grande Valley (Big Bend National Park). This suggested project is an extension of a crossing boundaries approach to studying ancient ecosystems and illustrates the nearly limitless nature of such an approach.

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