I was born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming and received a BS in Geology and a minor in Zoology from the University of Wyoming. I became interested in geology and paleontology during high school when I began to actively collect fossils from the stratigraphic sections in southeastern Wyoming and northern Colorado. During my time in college, I developed a passion for investigating the stratigraphy, biological diversity, and paleobiology of Upper Cretaceous macroinvertebrate faunas in North America. After graduating from college, I spent one year working for Uinta Paleontological Associates, Inc. of Vernal, Utah, as a geologists monitoring sites (e.g., gas and petroleum pipelines, coal mines) in Wyoming and Colorado for paleontological resources endangered by development.
I recently received my Ph.D. from the University of South Florida where I worked on an NSF-funded project examining the influence broad-scale climatic modes have on evolutionary patterns of molluscs. In addition to this research, I am also interested in stratigraphic paleobiology, sequence stratigraphy, phylogenetics, ammonites, inoceramids, the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway and Gulf of Mexico. In addition to these interests, I have also partaken in geological and paleontological field work in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Minnesota, Kansas, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, Denmark, and Colombia. |