By Steven Scarpa
Research exploring the evolution of the ozone layer was honored with the Yale Peabody Museum’s prestigious George Gaylord Simpson Prize.
The Simpson Prize is an annual award given by the Peabody to published papers on evolution and the fossil record. Simpson was considered one of the most influential paleontologists of the 20th century. He received his doctorate from Yale, studying mammalian evolution using the Peabody’s collection.
“Everyone knows about our vast collections, but the Peabody is also a premier research institution inspiring and supporting new ideas to help us better understand life on Earth,” said interim director Erika Edwards.
The winner of the prize, Jingjun Liu ’26, published a paper titled “Evolution of the iodine cycle and the late stabilization of the Earth’s ozone layer” in PNAS (The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)
The Earth’s ozone layer is a prerequisite for the evolution of complex life on land. Liu’s research demonstrates that sufficient atmospheric oxygen alone was not enough to establish a reliable ozone layer throughout evolutionary history.
“Instead, the evolving marine iodine cycle on Earth has fundamentally shaped the stability of the ozone layer for approximately two billion years following the initial oxygenation of the atmosphere,” Liu wrote in the paper.
The resulting elevated flux of UV radiation may have restricted complex life to the ocean, according to the paper.
Two other research projects received honorable mention.
Eleanor Goetz’s research explored how the origin, introduction, and spread of invasive species are essential for future prevention but is often impossible retroactively. Her paperproposes Foraminifera, micro-organisms with calcium carbonate shells, as invasion indicators. The paper’s innovative approach leverages interdisciplinary methods, including maritime history, paleontology, and ecology, to uncover the timing of, and reasons for the invasion of the invasive Ammonia confertitesta in Long Island Sound.
Caleb Gordon’s paper developed a new machine-learning pipeline, trained on more than 11,000 original measurements, that can predict whether extinct species were highly or fully aquatic and had soft-tissue flippers with more than 90% accuracy. Using this pipeline, Gordon and his co-authors reconstruct the evolutionary history of aquatic habits in all major groups of seafaring reptiles, revealing unexpectedly complex patterns and constraints governing their marine invasions.
Simpson Prize winner Jingjun Liu (left) celebrated with Peabody curator Bhart-Anjan Bhullar (center) and honorable mention recipient Eleanor Goetz (right)