Paleontology is often viewed as a science of the dead. The goal of the fossil expert is to find, restore, and understand life that no longer exists, filling out the long backstory of the modern world. But paleobiologists with an ecological bent are challenging this scientific stereotype. The past is not merely a graveyard of strange species, but a record of how life responds to environmental changes that our species is now having an ever-greater role in spurring. Given how greatly past climate change has altered the pattern of life, especially, researchers are scouring the past for hints about how catastrophes triggered by human activity might unfold. Ancient crustaceans, and the reefs they lived upon, may hold such clues.

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