The CBEP Acronym
Should one read through documents on past CBEP meetings, an oddity appears. From inception to the Bilbao meeting in 2006, CBEP stood for “Climate and Biota of the Early Paleogene”. However, for the Wellington meeting in 2009, this was changed to “Climate and Biotic Events of the Paleogene”, even though most work presented concerned the Paleocene and Eocene, and a rationale for the name change was never stated and may have been accidental. The 2011 Salzberg meeting returned with the original definition, which then left the scientific committee for the 2014 Ferrara meeting in an awkward position: what does CBEP actually stand for? At a somewhat humorous level, all became a consideration as to whether the CBEP community was married to or divorced from the Oligocene; after all, the latter was mostly cold and icy for over ten million years. At a deeper scientific level, however, the remarkable transition from greenhouse to icehouse conditions, and the ensuing changes in Earth surface processes and its climate and biota, remain outstanding puzzles. So, since 2014, our community has “warmly” embraced our newfound relationship with the Oligocene, and CBEP represents “Climate and Biotic Events of the Paleogene.
(provided by Jerry Dickens)