Bers' work on the parameterization of Teichmüller space led him in the 1960s to consider the boundary of the parameterized space, whose points corresponded to new types of Kleinian groups, eventually to be called singly-degenerate Kleinian groups. He applied Eichler cohomology, previously developed for applications in number theory and the theory of Lie groups, to Kleinian groups. He proved the Bers area inequality, an area bound for hyperbolic surfaces that became a two-dimensional precursor to William Thurston's work on geometrization of 3-manifolds and 3-manifold volume, and in this period Bers himself also studied the continuous symmetries of hyperbolic 3-space.