Welcome!

My name is Michael D'Antonio, and I am a postdoctoral scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. My research aims to reconstruct the biology and relationships of extinct plants in late Paleozoic (~300 million years ago) ecosystems through a combination of field work, museum specimen work, and insights from the biology of living plants. To do this I use advanced imaging and analytical techniques (X-ray microCT scanning, white-light scanning, Airyscan confocal super-resolution microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and elemental mapping) alongside traditional techniques (SEM, optical microscopy, and photography). My current projects include reconstructing the 3D morphology and systematics of enigmatic plants from Mazon Creek in Illinois and Wuda Tuff in Inner Mongolia, modeling plant development and physiology in the fossil record, and modeling the long-term effects of plant evolution on Phanerozoic climate, atmospheric chemistry, and carbon/nutrient cycles.