I am a PhD candidate in Baylor University’s Department of Geosciences, working under Dr. Dan Peppe. My research focuses on reconstructing ancient climates using plant fossils. I am deeply interested in understanding past ecosystems and their implications for modern climate science and human evolution.
What were ancient ecosystems like when our great ancestors lived? How many times have you walked through museum galleries, seen a beautiful dino paleoart, and felt curiosity about the ecological background behind it? What could the chances be? Unless, of course, you are a paleobotanist. Carry this idea forward and consider the stories of human evolution. The evolution of our great, great, great ancestors was not a matter of chance. There are arguably potential drivers of this evolution connected to the paleoclimate and paleoecology in which it occurred. Fortunately, this period corresponds to the Miocene: the future of the past. Here, I aim to answer some of these questions through proxy-based studies and unravel the paleoclimate and paleoecological context of Eastern African primate habitats during the Miocene.
Eastern African terrestrial ecosystems in the Early Miocene are characterized by habitat heterogeneity resulting from local rifting, climate variation, and biogeography. These dynamic landscapes profoundly influenced the evolutionary trajectories of hominoids and other vertebrates. This site-specific study with great preservation of leaves, tree stumps, and apes demonstrates an ecosystem of a dense, semi-deciduous tropical seasonal forest to rainforest.
The eastern African Middle Miocene is often seen as dominated by open landscapes and a seasonally arid wooded savanna biome, influenced by local rifting and climate shifts during the Mid Miocene Climatic Optimum (MMCO) and the Middle Miocene Climatic Transition (MMCT). This study lithologically reconstructs the fluvial sequence of this formation in combination with phytoliths (microscopic plant silica bodies) assemblages forming a comprehensive approach to the paleoecological reconstruction of this site.
The morphology of leaves is one of the tools paleobotanists use to estimate paleoclimate due to the correlation between leaf physiognomy (size and shape) with climate globally. This work suggests that leaf physiognomy of woody vegetation growing in similar environments will be alike as a result of convergent evolution of leaf phenotypes. Here, we are expanding and providing a more phytogenetically centred calibration on the available global dataset to include low latitude floras, specifically African floras.