Meet Carrie Schweitzer, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Kent State University, who since 2000 has been conducting research while teaching geology at Kent State University’s Stark Campus. Her expertise lies in evolution, decapods, crustacea, and invertebrate paleontology. Recently, Schweitzer has been working on an extensive research project intended to aid earth science students and professionals alike in their textbook understanding of Decapoda, a grouping that classifies crustaceans such as crabs, shrimp, and lobsters.
“My now late husband (Rodney Feldmann, Ph.D., a Kent State Earth Sciences professor) and I have been coordinating the revision of the Decapoda volume of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology,” Schweitzer said, “The Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology is basically an encyclopedia!”
In July 2024, with the help of many co-authors, Schweitzer published a chapter of the Decapoda volume titled Generalized External Adult Decapoda Morphology, one of many invertebrate groups to be detailed in the complete Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. This revised chapter includes many detailed visuals and diagrams of Decapoda made by Schweitzer herself. Additionally, it includes an expansive selection of information divided section by section regarding the biological, ecological, paleontological, and evolutionary foundations and features of nearly every species of Decapoda.
“The Generalized External Adult Decapoda Morphology chapter is designed to help anybody from a beginner to a professional paleontologist identify all of the parts of a Decapod, so if you found a crab fossil, you could take that chapter and you could identify where the eyes are, what we call the different parts, which leg is which, and which claws are which so that you could get an idea of what you had,” Schweitzer said.
Schweitzer chose to emphasize putting all the information she could into one place with the hindsight knowledge and experience she obtained while studying Decapoda as an earth sciences student. The biggest challenge about cataloguing all this information was making sure that the chapter was thorough and detailed, but not repetitive or boring. Schweitzer made her vision come to life through her extensive and precise illustrations of Decapoda.
“I really liked making sure that we illustrated all of the little parts [of Decapoda] that are important, parts where if you're a beginner, you probably wouldn’t know to look for it, or you wouldn’t even know what you're looking at,” Schweitzer said.
Decapoda in a larger context
In July 2023, Schweitzer and Feldmann published a paper, “Selective extinction at the end-Cretaceous and appearance of the modern Decapoda,” detailing which decapods did or did not survive at the end of the Cretaceous mass extinction. This paper goes into deep analysis of which characteristics species that survived or didn’t survive had, while serving as a study that could be predictive of future evolutionary outcomes of trends.
“This kind of research and work is critical right now because we are seeing extinction and we really need data to help us understand who lives, who doesn't, and therefore, what we can do to try to conserve species,” Sweitzer said. “‘Selective extinction at the end-Cretaceous and appearance of the modern Decapoda,’ is vital as it reconstructs the fossil record of these organisms by seeing who has evolved, and by documenting why, when, and how species become extinct; this kind of work will help us understand what's happening on Earth right now.”
While the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology is Schweitzer’s main focus, she is also working on a project where she will be re-classifying fossil species that have been incorrectly placed in the wrong families. While these fossils have been dead for around 60 million years, Schweitzer believes that there is significance in studying and classifying these fossils correctly.
“Reclassifying these fossils helps us to reconstruct biodiversity,” Schweitzer said. “Understanding how diverse these things were can help us compare their past to what we're seeing now and can help us to predict extinctions and see what the pattern of marine life in the last 550,000,000 years has been.”
Earth Sciences at Kent State
“My advice for anyone interested in earth sciences is to just go for it and get outside, climb rocks, maybe see some cool geological features while doing activities like geocaching,” Schweitzer said. “Most importantly, don't be afraid to take a science class in our Earth Sciences Department at Kent State because you'll probably love it.”
For more information about Kent State University’s Earth Sciences Department, visit https://www.kent.edu/earth-sciences.
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Media Contact:
Jim Maxwell, JMAXWEL2@kent.edu, 330-672-8028