About

Simon Peters is a faculty member in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His specialization includes community-based linguistics, diaspora linguistics, language documentation, heritage language development, multilingualism, language maintenance, and identity. His research also focuses on linguistic variation, morphophonology, tone, and the Tu’un Savi (Mixtec) language. Through his work, he contributes to understanding language dynamics within communities, particularly those involving minority and heritage languages, and explores the linguistic features and structures of Mixtec. His academic and research activities are centered on advancing knowledge in applied linguistics with an emphasis on language preservation, documentation, and the sociocultural aspects of language use.

Research topics

• Geology
• Paleontology
• Computer science
• Earth science
• Ecology

Selected publications

• The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology’s digital databases

  Nature Ecology & Evolution · 2026-02-10 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  The digital revolution has transformed palaeontology through the development of openly accessible, community-driven databases that underpin some of the most complex and large-scale empirical studies of the history of life on Earth. These systems safeguard high-effort, volunteered data and have revealed major macroevolutionary patterns, including the 'Big 5' mass extinctions. These efforts also represent remarkable global scientific and financial investment, which is continually required to support the next generation of databases and associated research. Here we conducted a survey of 118 palaeontological and allied Earth science databases, analysing their diversity dynamics, including origination and extinction rates. We show that approximately 85% of all community-curated databases have lifespans of less than 15 years, putting decades of investment at risk. We show that database creation effort has increased in the past 30 years, with peaks in database loss related to 5-year funding cycles. We advocate for strategies to enhance database longevity, including sustained funding models, stronger institutional support and modular backend architectures that better link international community databases to each other and to fossil specimens.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Sedimentary geochemistry and paleoenvironments project phase 2 data release: An open data resource for the study of Earth's environmental history

  Chemical Geology · 2026-02-01

  articleOpen access

  Geochemical data from sedimentary rocks are the primary source of information regarding Earth's surface evolution through time, including its air and water envelopes and interactions with life and deep Earth processes. The Sedimentary Geochemistry and Paleoenvironments Project (SGP) is a scientific consortium centered around open data and community-driven development of cyberinfrastructure tools and resources for sedimentary geochemistry and Earth history. Here we describe the SGP Phase 2 data release, which focused on incorporating Paleoproterozoic and Mesoproterozoic (2500–1000 million years ago) data and better accommodating carbonate data. This data release was built through the involvement of >200 researchers worldwide in academia, government, and industry, and provides the largest available public data resource for our user community in the academic fields of geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, paleontology, Earth history, and paleoclimate, as well as the petroleum and minerals industries. The dataset now encompasses 126,006 samples and 4,132,371 geochemical analyses. In addition to direct entry by SGP Team Members, we have ingested and incorporated datasets from the Geoscience Australia OZCHEM database, the Alberta Geological Survey, and the Deep-Time Marine Sedimentary Element Database (DM-SED) compilation. This paper details sampling in the Phase 2 dataset with respect to age, geography, lithology, and other geological characteristics, documents access via our search website and API, discusses possible issues and/or biases in the dataset that could impact analyses, describes plans for governance and stewardship of data from Indigenous lands, and serves as the citable reference paper for the data release.

  PublisherDOI

• A tectonically driven 60 million-year biogeochemical redox cycle paces marine biodiversity

  DRYAD · 2026-02-24

  datasetOpen access

  The fossil record shows a prominent 60 million-year biodiversity cycle during the Phanerozoic Eon, the origin of which is still unknown. Here we use time-series analysis and correlation of empirical and model datasets of Earth’s interior and surficial processes to demonstrate that this cycle is a pervasive feature in marine animal genus-level diversity data that dominates in the Paleozoic Era. Our results suggest that extinctions are likely the primary driver of this observed cyclicity. We detected a correlatable 60 million-year cyclicity in global tectonics, and in marine 87Sr/86Sr and δ34S isotopes, all of which are dominant in the Paleozoic. We conclude that continental weathering driven by global tectonic degassing and building of continental arcs may have in turn controlled paleo-seawater redox cycling during the Paleozoic when oceans were likely less saturated with respect to oxygen. In particular, we suggest that the 60 million-year fluctuations in biotic diversity are responses of shallow marine habitats to the combined effects of continental weathering and redox cycling, under global tectonic control.

  PublisherDOI

• The Marjuman trilobite Cedarina Lochman: thoracic morphology, systematics, and new species from western Utah and eastern Nevada, USA

  The Catalogue of Life · 2026-02-17

  datasetOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Marjuman trilobite Cedarina Lochman: thoracic morphology, systematics, and new species from western Utah and eastern Nevada, USA

  The Catalogue of Life · 2026-02-16

  datasetOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Shifting carbonate burial between oceanic and continental crust across Earth history

  Earth and Planetary Science Letters · 2026-01-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  • Carbonates on oceanic crust cycle quickly but can persist on continental crust. • Most CaCO 3 burial in the Precambrian may have taken place on oceanic crust. • CaCO 3 burial shifted up onto continents during the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition. • CO 2 input from subducting carbonates likely decreased throughout the Paleozoic. • Latest Paleozoic ocean was poorly buffered against effects of CO 2 injections. Chemical weathering fluxes determine carbonate burial rates on geologic timescales, but the locus of carbonate burial is sensitive to tectonic and biologic boundary conditions that have changed across Earth history. Depositional setting is important because sediments on oceanic crust are readily recycled on the timescale of seafloor subduction, whereas sediments on continental crust can be sequestered over much longer durations. Here we present records of carbonate abundance in continental sediments for the past 3600 million years based on the North American components of the Macrostrat geologic column database and globally-distributed geological map units. Whether carbonate abundance is measured in absolute (area, volume) or in relative terms (carbonate normalized by total sediment), secular patterns emerge. In the Precambrian, carbonate abundance in continental crust is generally low. In the Phanerozoic, it climbs abruptly to a Paleozoic maximum and then declines towards the present. Decrease in shelf carbonate abundance across the Phanerozoic has been previously documented, driven in part by evolving paleogeography and the early Mesozoic evolution of pelagic calcifiers, which helped to shift carbonate burial from continental to oceanic crust. A Precambrian low in continental carbonate has received less attention. Here we propose that carbonate burial during much of the Precambrian was dominated by accumulation on (or within) oceanic crust and then shifted to continental crust in the early Paleozoic. Carbonate burial fluxes calibrated from the surviving rock record are an order of magnitude larger in the early Paleozoic than they appear to have been in the Proterozoic, with a step-wise increase occurring during the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition. This observation implies a large and relatively abrupt shift in the principal locus of CaCO 3 burial, from short-lived oceanic crust during much of the Proterozoic to longer-surviving continental crust in the early Paleozoic. Oceanic crust became, once again, a significant locus for carbonate accumulation during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. The Paleozoic accommodation of most of the global carbon burial flux on the continents has many implications, including for secular changes in carbon cycling rates and the sensitivity of the surface environment to CO 2 injections.

  PublisherDOI

• A tectonically driven 60 million-year biogeochemical redox cycle paces marine biodiversity

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2025-06-06

  articleOpen access

  The fossil record shows a prominent 60 million-year biodiversity cycle during the Phanerozoic Eon, the origin of which is still unknown. Here we use time-series analysis and correlation of empirical and model datasets of Earth’s interior and surficial processes to demonstrate that this cycle is a pervasive feature in marine animal genus-level diversity data that dominates in the Paleozoic Era. Our results suggest that extinctions are likely the primary driver of this observed cyclicity. We detected a correlatable 60 million-year cyclicity in global tectonics, and in marine 87Sr/86Sr and δ34S isotopes, all of which are dominant in the Paleozoic. We conclude that continental weathering driven by global tectonic degassing and building of continental arcs may have in turn controlled paleo-seawater redox cycling during the Paleozoic when oceans were likely less saturated with respect to oxygen. In particular, we suggest that the 60 million-year fluctuations in biotic diversity are responses of shallow marine habitats to the combined effects of continental weathering and redox cycling, under global tectonic control. A 60 million-year cyclic fluctuation in biotic extinction and diversity in the Phanerozoic suggests a response to biogeochemical redox cycling in shallow marine habitats paced by global tectonic processes, according to time-series analysis and correlation of empirical and model datasets of Earth’s interior and surficial processes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Continental-Scale Carbonate Sedimentation and Environmental Correlates of the Shuram-Wonoka Excursion

  2025-07-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Strata of the Ediacaran Period record many Earth-Life features that distinguish the Neoproterozoic-Phanerozoic transition. However, it is difficult to determine cause and effect relationships between Ediacaran events. Continental-scale patterns of sedimentation have been used as proxies to investigate controls on Phanerozoic macroevolution, including sea level drivers and potential carbon cycling perturbations. Here we focus on quantitative properties of carbonate rock area, volume, geochemistry, and depositional environments from the North American Ediacaran System. Patterns of carbonate sedimentation and geochemistry are broadly coincident with transgressive/regressive cycles which have been linked to glacioeustacy and global/regional tectonics. Highly negative carbonate carbon isotope values distinguishing the Shuram-Wonoka carbon isotope excursion (SW-CIE) coincide with a distinct increase in carbonate quantity, which spans nearshore, outer shelf, and slope/basin depositional environments. An increase in the extent of carbonate sedimentation on the continent may indicate global marine transgression, suggesting that the excursion occurred during an interglacial warm period. This same increase in carbonate sedimentation is also broadly coincident with first occurrences of the Ediacaran biota. A subsequent increase in carbonate rock quantity in the latest Ediacaran, dominantly deposited in nearshore environments, coincides with the appearance of biomineralizers, potentially indicating common cause drivers for the extent of shallow shelves, carbonate sedimentation on the continents, and macroevolution. This analysis provides a robust, rock record-based chronostratigraphic framework within which major Ediacaran events can be anchored, new evidence of environmental correlates for several key features of the Ediacaran and provides a foundation for future hypothesis testing during the dawn of animal life.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Sedimentary Geochemistry and Paleoenvironments Project Phase 2 data release: An open data resource for the study of Earth's environmental history

  Chemical Geology · 2025-11-17

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Did Iron Suppress Eukaryote Emergence and Early Radiation?

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-05-30

  preprintOpen access

  The last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA) is widely thought to have been an oxygen-respiring organism, arising through endosymbiosis when a free-living bacterium became the mitochondrion. Owing to the mitochondrion s central metabolic task of oxidative phosphorylation, oxygen availability has long been a hypothesized driver of eukaryogenesis. However, this hypothesis is challenged by a temporal disconnect, spanning several hundred million years, between the earliest geochemical evidence for oxygen in the environment (~3.2-2.5 Ga) and the oldest widely accepted eukaryotic fossils (~1.7 Ga). Notably, the earliest candidate eukaryotes appear contemporaneous with the cessation of major iron deposits and rise of sulfide- and sulfate-rich marine sediments in coastal environments. Here, we integrate Proterozoic surface geochemical records with the microbial biochemistry of iron to examine potential environmental constraints on early eukaryotic evolution. Iron bioavailability exerts complex and often antagonistic effects on both aerobic and anaerobic microbial lineages that contributed to LECA. Elevated iron levels likely disrupted cellular homeostasis, particularly by destabilizing labile iron pools and promoting oxidative damage to bacterial lipids. The programmed cell death pathways known as ferroptosis, which is widespread among eukaryotic lineages, may trace its origins to iron-rich conditions in Archaean and Paleoproterozoic seawater and LECA. Our findings challenge oxygen-centered paradigms of eukaryogenesis and reframes the long-recognized temporal gap as a consequence of iron-mediated physiological constraints.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Constraining Geological and Macroevolutionary Patterns and Processes during the Phanerozoic

  NSF · $75k · 2006–2007

• EarthCube Building Blocks: Collaborative Proposal: Digital Crust - A 4D Exploratory Environment for Earth Science Research and Learning

  NSF · $247k · 2014–2017

• CAREER: Towards a high-resolution quantification of the North American rock record: integrating field data, citizen science, and participatory education for macrostratigraphy

  NSF · $863k · 2012–2019

• EarthCube Science-Enabling Data Capabilities: Collaborative Proposal: Extending Ocean Drilling Pursuits [eODP]: Microfossils and Stratigraphy

  NSF · $309k · 2019–2025

• EarthCube Building Blocks: A Cognitive Computer Infrastructure for Geoscience

  NSF · $1.5M · 2013–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Michael Foote

  University of Chicago

  131 shared

• Martin Aberhan

  Museum für Naturkunde

  128 shared

• Wolfgang Kiessling

  128 shared

• Adam Tomášových

  Earth Science Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

  128 shared

• Matthew E. Clapham

  Planetary Science Institute

  128 shared

• Mark E. Patzkowsky

  Pennsylvania State University

  128 shared

• David J. Bottjer

  128 shared

• Jocelyn A. Sessa

  Drexel University

  84 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Geophysical Sciences

  University of Chicago

  2003

• B.S., Geology

  Denison University

  1998