About Dr. Hegna

Dr. Thomas Hegna grew up in western Iowa and attended the University of Iowa where he fell in love with invertebrate paleontology. He graduated in the spring of 2004 with honors and high distinction in Geoscience (B.S.) with minors in English and Philosophy. Dr. Hegna stayed at the University of Iowa for his M.S., graduating in the fall of 2006 after completing a project on the systematics and phylogeny of a fauna of upper Cambrian trilobites. He then moved on to Yale University where he completed his thesis on branchiopod crustacean phylogeny and their fossil record in the spring of 2012. He taught at Western Illinois University from the fall of 2011 to the spring of 2019.  In 2016, he was awarded the WIU Provost’s Excellence Award for Teaching with Technology. 

During the summer of 2019, he moved to Fredonia to teach in the Geology  & Environmental Sciences Department at SUNY Fredonia. He continues to study both the fossil record of trilobites and early crustaceans. In the spring of 2022, he was awarded the William T. and Charlotte N. Hagen Young Scholar/Artist award at SUNY Fredonia for his outstanding record of scholarship. In the spring of 2024, he was the SUNY Fredonia awardee for the Chancellor's award for excellence in scholarship. In the spring of 2025, he was awarded the Robert W. Kasling Lecture Award for his excellence in scholarship. He has led two separate teams (one at WIU and another at SUNY Fredonia) that have received National Science Foundation grants for scanning electron microscopes. He has nearly 50 published peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and over 100 conference presentations. He has mentored the research projects of 40 students. He continues to study both the fossil record of trilobites and early crustaceans.

Education

YALE UNIVERSITY (New Haven, CT)

Adviser: Dr. Derek. E. G. Briggs

    •Ph.D, Geology & Geophysics                    2006-2012

Dissertation: Fossils and Phylogeny: The Evolution of Branchiopod Crustaceans

    •M.Phil, Geology & Geophysics                    2009

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA (Iowa City, IA)

Adviser: Dr. Jonathan M. Adrain

    •M.S., Geoscience                                                        2004-2006

    Dissertation: Late Cambrian Trilobites from the St. Charles Formation, Idaho

    •B.S., Geoscience, with honors and distinction            2000-2004

    Minors in English and Philosophy

    Honors Thesis: An Early Silurian (Llandovery: Rhuddanian) trilobite fauna from the Bowling Green Dolomite (Edgewood Group) of northeastern Missouri

Memberships

• Paleontological Society

• Palaeontological Association

• The Crustacean Society