Paleontology & Paleobiology

In paleontology and paleobiology, we ask questions about the evolution of life that range across all geological time and span from individual species to the whole of life. We study the evolution of mammals, especially those that lived after dinosaur extinction and during past intervals of climate change, the structure and dynamics of Mesozoic ecosystems recorded in fossil feces, the origin and evolution of colonial marine life, and the interactions between biotic and planetary evolution.

We ask our questions using museum specimens and new discoveries made from the field, geochemistry, phylogenetic methods based on fossils and molecules, statistical analyses of large parts of the fossil record, and evolutionary theory. Our field research takes us all over the Rocky Mountain Region to the Arctic and tropical America, and we utilize the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History’s vast paleontology collection that includes over 150,000 catalogued specimens from more than 45 states and 80 countries.