Lapworth Lecture - 160 million years of responses to climate change in Mesozoic dinosaur ecosystems

The Earth’s history is marked by episodes of dramatic climate change, during which ancient ecosystems were reshaped by rising temperatures. Dinosaurs, along with other animals and plants, were forced to adapt, migrate, or face extinction under these extreme conditions.

Dr. Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, a palaeontologist and Royal Society Newton International Fellow at University College London, investigates how Mesozoic and early Cenozoic faunas responded to climatic upheavals between 100 and 50 million years ago. By combining fossil evidence with advanced models of ancient climates, his research explores how species shifted their ranges, evolved new traits, and restructured their ecological communities in the face of rapid warming. These insights into past biotic responses offer perspectives on which species may adapt, or face extinction, in today’s climate crisis.

Fieldwork is central to this research. Since 2024, Dr. Chiarenza has collaborated with Dr. Lindsay Zanno through the MADEx initiative (Mongolian Alliance for Dinosaur Exploration), an interdisciplinary project investigating the impact of hyperthermal events on Asian ecosystems during the Cretaceous. As part of this effort, he has conducted extensive field campaigns in the Gobi Basin of Mongolia, with 40 days in 2024 and 31 days in 2025, excavating and documenting new fossil-rich sites. These expeditions are yielding crucial new data to test how one of the most extreme warming events of the last 100 million years shaped dinosaur-dominated ecosystems in Asia.

In this lecture, the speaker will take you on a journey across the Cretaceous of North America and Mongolia to present the latest findings and how they are reshaping our understanding of dinosaur evolution. The talk will explore how millions of years of climatic change affected dinosaur diversification and their ultimate demise, and will reflect on what this means for today’s biodiversity crisis.

About Alfio Alessandro

Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza is a Royal Society Newton International Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London. He earned his PhD from Imperial College London and previously held postdoctoral positions at the Universidade de Vigo, Spain and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, United States. As a palaeontologist, his research focuses on dinosaur macroevolution and extinction, using fossils, phylogenetics and Earth system modelling tools in combination with fieldwork in remote areas such as the Badlands of Utah, Montana, and Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.