Current Research Interests

 - Past global change; paleobotany; paleoecology; plant-insect interactions; paleoclimatology from fossils; Cretaceous and Paleogene of North and South America; extinction and paleodiversity; stratigraphy.

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I am a paleobotanist who uses fossil plants to quantify past global change and to evaluate ancient ecosystems, emphasizing questions that help to illuminate the deep-time context of modern climates, biodiversity, and ecological processes. Focal areas include paleoclimatology; the response of terrestrial ecosystems to major disruptions such as climate changes and mass extinction; and the evolution and diversification of plants and their herbivores. My temporal emphasis is the latest Cretaceous through middle Eocene (66-45 Ma), an interval that has profoundly shaped the modern world. This time period includes latest Cretaceous climate changes, the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, the recovery of terrestrial ecosystems during the Paleocene, and global warming across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary. Principal field areas include the Patagonian region of Argentina and the Western Interior USA.

A more detailed description of my research can be found here.