What happens when large herbivores disappear from landscapes? Much of my research to date has used the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna as a natural experiment, documenting the cascading effects of the loss of large herbivores on the plant communities they left behind. To do this, I marshall the paleoecological […]
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” – Palynology A colleague of mine (also a paleoecologist) recently recounted a story where, when learning about his research, a senior scientist remarked, “I thought pollen was dead?” This is never something someone wants to hear about one’s primary methodology, particularly at […]
“As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I looked toward Birnam, and anon methought the wood began to move.” – Messenger, Shakespeare’s Macbeth The simple story of the last 2.5 million years of vegetation response to climate change could be summed up like this: temperature goes up and down, plants […]
Plants have sex. While flowers, cones, and fruits– basically the vaginas and uteruses of the plant world– feature prominently in human cultures, much of the actual, er, act of plant sex is invisible to us. As northerners dig out from under record-breaking snowfalls and eye the ground for the first crocuses and […]
Paleoecological research involves equal parts detective work, mental time-travel, and story-telling. Clues from the past are collected and pieced together to map out what landscapes might have looked like, and how they may have changed through time. It’s not unlike walking through the set of a play after all the […]
The progression through grad school is measured in milestones; some are official (like qualifying exams), others less so, but no less important. This week, I passed such a milestone: I counted the very last pollen grain of my dissertation. For those of you less familiar with the details of paleoecological […]
The Contemplative Mammoth 