Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology &

Assistant Professor of Geosciences

University of Oklahoma

colesr@ou.edu

Google Scholar   ●   Academia.edu

I am an Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Sam Noble Museum and an Assistant Professor of Geosciences at the University of Oklahoma.

​

My research uses the fossil record of invertebrates to investigate macroevolutionary and macroecological patterns and their driving processes over the last ~500 million  years. The two major themes forming the core of my research program are (1) extinction risk and recovery and (2) community paleoecology.

 

Much of my work is specimen-based, and I make  extensive use of museum collections integrated with fieldwork, phylogeny reconstruction, and a wide variety analytical approaches like phylogenetic comparative methods. I have also worked extensively on the systematics of fossil crinoids (feather stars and sea lilies) and often use crinoids as a model group for macroevolutionary investigations.