Mentor: Madeline Ess, Ph.D.

Lagerstätten deposits are vital sources of insight into past ecosystem functions and environments. Due to their exceptional preservation, they contain more direct evidence of ecological and geographical relationships than many other types of deposition. Aside from sedimentary data, such as bedforms and grain-size changes, lagerstätten deposits preserve minerals, such as phosphate and pyrite, isotopic signatures, and other indicators of climate transitions Lagerstätten deposits are also well known for preserving soft bodied organisms that are rarely retained in the fossil record. Together these features indicate unique environmental conditions during deposition and showcase ecological information that are typically inaccessible in other preservation modes. Correlations among spatially distant lagerstätten deposits provide a unique opportunity to investigate fossil systems. Because the ecological resolution preserved is unusually high, it is possible to parse out more detailed interactions between taxa and their environment. Such global paleoecological data are vital for investigating how paleoecosystems evolved, interacted with environmental conditions, and in some cases, declined. These long-term perspectives also provide insights into how global biodiversity has changed through time. While the scientific value of lagerstätten deposits is clear, research remains extremely challenging because of the highly decentralized nature of the literature. This review addresses that limitation by compiling a database of global lagerstätten and their features, including age, global location, depositional environment, preservation type, and associated organisms. In addition to this data, global lagerstätten are associated with primary source authors, which eases future reviews of lagerstätten deposits and facilitates global collaboration across the field. Lagerstätten deposits contain troves of unparalleled information regarding the deep past of Earth’s ecosystem and insights into our future. A readily available database of these deposits will enable other workers to apply new techniques to these deposits, ultimately leading to greater understanding of both ancient and modern ecosy.

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