Kristan-Tollmann collected samples almost all over the Alps and expanded her sampling in the 1970s worldwide ( Turkey , Iran , China , Timor , New Guinea , Australia , Japan , Central and North America as the Sonoran Desert in Mexico ) , on some quite dangerous trips to remote areas . For example , in 1975 she narrowly escaped the East Timor genocide . She often traveled alone , but prepared for her trips quite thoroughly . A major focus of her worldwide work was the global remote correlation of paleontological data in the Triassic Tethys and early Jurassic , the Black Jurassic . She discovered a surprising similarity in the fauna and the sequences , which also led to revisions of descriptions of taxa . Through her work , many of the early macro-fossils from this period which were first described in Austria in the classical period of paleontology and had been described differently in other parts of the world were reassigned . It also led to revisions in the theory of ocean currents in the Tethys Ocean , as larvae were posited to have traveled great distances as part of plankton in that body of water . For one example , she explained the correspondence of observably similar rock bodies in Alpine regions and Chine in the Triassic period as a function of global fluctuations in sea level . She explored the division between the Tethys Ocean and Panthalassa in New Caldonia
East Timor genocide
East Timor genocide
Edith Kristan-Tollmann