Member of the Faculty,
PhD Program in Earth and Environmental Sciences, Graduate School, CUNY
Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University
Office: SB E-222
Telephone: (718) 997-3333/3334
FAX: (718) 997-3299

Research Interests

I am a biostratigrapher who uses microfossils (principally palynomorphs and calcareous nanoplankton) and detrital organic particles to solve geological problems. My current research interests are as follows:

The dinoflagellate Manumiella seelandica occurs in an acme assemblage virtually at the mass extinction event which occurred approximately 65.5Ma (Cretaceous/Paleogene, KPg boundary). At the Bass River site in southern New Jersey, this species occurs in an interval just 20 cm beneath the KPg boundary, where it reaches more than 33% of the dinoflagellate assemblage. The KPg M. seelandica spike has a global distribution which ranges from mid-latitude and high latitude locations in Argentina, New Zealand and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere and as far north as West Greenland in the Northern Hemisphere. We are attempting to obtain geochemical data which may indicate a correlation of the assemblage with slight climatic cooling at the end of the Cretaceous Period.

My other interests include using synthetic textile fibers to trace the distribution of effluent opposite sewage treatment plants and to determine the role of heterotrophic dinoflagellates in passing treated sewage chemicals through the food cycle (oysters eat dinoflagellates).

Teaching Philosophy

I have developed courses in stratigraphy and micropaleontology. My PhD graduates have produced dissertations in the dinoflagellate stratigraphy and sedimentology of organic matter. I mostly enjoy working with graduate and undergraduate students in individual research projects. And, of course, I immensely enjoy teaching coursework in dinosaurs, birds and other tetrapods of the Mesozoic Era.

A list of courses taught:

Undergraduate

• GEOL006 Fossil Record
• GEOL007 Dinosaurs
• GEOL008 Introduction to Oceanography
• GEOL213 Sedimentation and Stratigraphy

Graduate

• GEOL736 Palynology
• GEOL599/799 Special Topics: Dinsaurs
• EES70200 Advanced Principles of Historical Geology
• EES70800 Time, Life, and Global Change

Selected Publications

Habib, Daniel and Saeedi, Farnosh, 2007. The Manumiella seelandica global spike: cooling during regression at the close of the Maastrichtian. Palaeo-3, Elsevier Special Issue: Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary Events. In press.

Habib, Daniel, Locke, David C., and Cannone, Leonard, 1998. Synthetic fibers as indicators of municipal sludge, sludge products, and sewage treatment plant effluents. Water, Air, and Soil Pollution, v. 103, p. 1-8.

Olsson, Richard K., Miller, Kenneth G., Browning, James V., Habib, Daniel, and Sugarman, Peter J., 1997. Ejecta layer at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, Bass River, New Jersey (Ocean Drilling Program Leg 174AX), Geology, v. 25, n. 8, p. 759-762.

Xie, Kevin Y., Locke, David C., Habib, Daniel, Judge, Michael, and Kriss, Charles. 1997. Environmental chemical impact of recycled plastic timbers used in the Tiffany Street Pier, South Bronx, New York. Resources, Conservation, and Recycling, v. 21, p. 199-211.

Habib, Daniel, Olsson, Richard K., Liu, Chengjie, and Moshkovitz, Shimon, 1996. High resolution biostratigraphy of sea-level low, biotic extinction, and chaotic sedimentation at the Cretaceous-Tertiaqry boundary in Alabama, north of the Chicxulub crater, Geological Society of America, Special Paper 307, p. 243-251.

Moshkovitz, Shimon and Habib, Daniel, 1993. Calcareous nannofossil and dinoflagellate stratigraphy of the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, Alabama and Georgia. Micropaleontology, v. 39, n. 2, p. 167-191.