Exploring Cenozoic vegetation cover and paleobiodiversity evolution induced by paleogeography and climate change

Paleogeographic evolution is a major forcing of climate on long (multi-million years) time scales, which in turn can drive important vegetation cover variations. While recent studies have shown the important role played by abiotic factors on species diversification and on the establishment of modern biodiversity gradients, and although climate models are designed to simulate increasingly realistic vegetation cover, it remains difficult to estimate the accuracy of the results obtained. Indeed, the fossil record available to estimate the evolution of the paleovegetation cover remains heterogenous and fragmentary in some regions.  

Here, we present climate and vegetation cover response to paleogeography evolution throughout the Cenozoic as simulated with IPSL-CM5A2 Earth System Model. In a second time, we wish to explore means of using temperature and precipitation values extracted from such models simulations, in order to constrain birth-death diversification models. While the use of regionally-averaged abiotic parameters seems a potentially considerable improvement, as opposed to current methods based on global climate curve temperature, this methodology presents some technical challenges that remain to be tackled.