Chronology and Faunal Evolution of the Middle Eocene Bridgerian North American Land Mammal 'Age': Achieving High Precision Geochronology

The age of the Bridgerian/Uintan boundary has been regarded as one of the most important outstanding problems in North American Land Mammal "Age" (NALMA) biochronology. The Bridger Basin in southwestern Wyoming preserves one of the best stratigraphic records of the faunal boundary as well as the preceding Bridgerian NALMA. In this dissertation, I first developed a chronological framework for the Eocene Bridger Formation including the age of the boundary, based on a combination of magnetostratigraphy and U-Pb ID-TIMS geochronology. Within the temporal framework, I attempted at making a regional correlation of the boundary-bearing strata within the western U.S., and also assessed the body size evolution of three representative taxa from the Bridger Basin within the context of Early Eocene Climatic Optimum. Integrating radioisotopic, magnetostratigraphic and astronomical data from the early to middle Eocene, I reviewed various calibration models for the Geological Time Scale and intercalibration of 40Ar/39Ar data among laboratories and against U-Pb data, toward the community goal of achieving a high precision and well integrated Geological Time Scale.;In Chapter 2, I present a magnetostratigraphy and U-Pb zircon geochronology of the Bridger Formation from the Bridger Basin in southwestern Wyoming. The ∼560 meter composite section spans from the lower Bridger B to the Bridger E, including the Bridgerian/Uintan NALMA boundary in the uppermost part of the section. Analysis of samples from 90 sites indicates two paleomagnetic reversals that are correlated to an interval spanning Chrons C22n, C21r, and C21n by comparison to the Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale (GPTS). This correlation places the Bridgerian/Uintan faunal boundary within Chron C21n, during the initial cooling phase following the peak of the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum. Based on the bio- and magnetostratigraphic correlation, I provide correlation of other Bridgerian/Uintan boundary-bearing sections to the GPTS, demonstrating that in the western North America, the Bridgerian/Uintan boundary occurs everywhere in Chron C21n. In addition, U-Pb zircon geochronological analyses were performed on three ash beds from the Bridger Formation. High-precision U-Pb dates were combined with the paleomagnetic polarity data of the same ash beds as well as the integrative chronostratigraphy of the basin to assess prior calibration models for the Eocene part of the GPTS. The data from the Bridger Formation indicate that the Option 3 age model of Westerhold et al. (2008) best reconciles the geochronological data from all of the ash beds except for one. Thus I favor this Option 3 model, which indicates the ages of 56.33 Ma and 66.08 Ma for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary, respectively.;In Chapter 3, the body size evolution of three mammalian taxa from the Bridgerian NALMA was analyzed within the context of Bergmann's Rule, which poses a correlation between the size of endotherms and climate (latitude). The Bridgerian NALMA is from a time of global cooling following the peak of the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum, thus according to Bergmann's Rule, the Bridgerian mammals are expected to increase in size. This hypothesis is tested among Notharctus, Hyopsodus, and Orohippus, using the size of molar dentition as a proxy for their body size. These taxa represent three different ecomorphs, and I investigated if these taxa showed a pattern of body size change consistent with the prediction made by Bergmann's Rule, and how their ecological adaptation may have affected their response to the climate change.;In Chapter 4, 40Ar/39Ar dates were obtained from sanidines from the middle Eocene Henrys Fork tuff and Upper Carboniferous Fire Clay tonstein, with the goal of making highly precise measurements of these two samples, keyed to the Fish Canyon monitor standard. Analytically, both samples were well characterized, as had been shown previously. The irradiation disk was arranged such that there would have been control from the Fish Canyon surrounding each of the unknown pits. However, due to several complications in the lab during the course of the experiment, only the analyses from one run disk (Disk 677) were of the quality needed for the goals of the study. As a result, the Fish Canyon sanidine standards that were irradiated near the center of the irradiation disk had to be discarded, and thus, the neutron fluence could not be mapped out precisely across the entire disk. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).