Esteban Lopez Murillo

PhD
Earth and Planetary Sciences

Mass extinctions are short events in which a lot of species go extinct. There have been five big of these events in the last 600 million years. The last one was the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg), triggered by a 10 km wide asteroid impact in the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago. This project aims to collect paleontological data to understand how molluscan communities were doing. Fieldwork will be done in Chiapas, Mexico and Peten, Guatemala, very close to the impact crater. Since we are heading into a sixth mass extinction event, by looking at the K-Pg, we could better understand how mollusks react to this stresses and protect them.