Eberhard (Dino) Frey

Mexico had always been a corridor and still is. During the Jurassic the ancient Gulf of Mexico had been isolated over some time and turned into an incubator for new species of marine reptiles and fishes that later would interfere with animalsi from the Pacific, the Western Inner Seabridge of the Paleoatlantic and the Eastern Thetys. The Gulf of Mexico, thus, turned into a melting pot, where species from four Oceans and two continents (Gondwana in the South and Laurasia in the North) could merge. When the Western Thetys was cut of by the Caribean Plate, the circumequatorial warm-water heating had been cut off. The only thing we know for sure is that the oceans are the weather kitchens of this planet, and the switches for the currents are plate tectonics. When the climate changes, vegetation changes next. Only then follow the animals. This was always like this, until humans overtook plate tectonics in speed. Vegetation already changes. Additional two degrees and we are shifted into the Eem Warm Period. But this times it is us and not cosmic parameters that steer the climate. What the consequences will b, we can learn from looking at the events in ancient Mexico.

Sprecher: Eberhard Frey carries his second name "Dino" for a certain reason - he is heading the department of Geology of the Karlsruhe Museum for Natural Science and is one of the internationally most prominent representative of "Dino"logy. After studying biology in Tübingen he worked during his Ph.D. on fossile crocodiles and specialised on Flying Dinosaurs, where he contributed the discovery and description of several new species. Following an intermezzo at the Landesmuseum Darmstadt he found his destination in Karlsruhe and is also integrated as professor into the KIT biology. His speciality, so called construction morphology, attempts to understand and to explain body structures on biophysical basis. During recent years he has made several unexpected discoveries in Mexico that will put our image on evolution prior to Homo sapins upside down.