Fieldwork

I have been involved in fieldwork and field-based projects around the world, including in Virginia, Alaska, Montana, Ireland, Spain, and Canada. Below are summaries of my current field sites and ongoing research in those areas.

Anticosti Island, Quebec (Canada)

Anticosti Island preserves one of the most complete stratigraphic sections spanning the Ordovician-Silurian boundary. Rocks are exposed in extensive coastal and river exposures, making it one of the best sites in the world for studying the Late Ordovician mass extinction. My work on Anticosti has focused on collecting specimens for morphological and taxonomic studies within the context of measured stratigraphic sections over the Ordovician extinction. This includes description of new and well-preserved crinoids and investigation of body size change in brachiopods and other invertebrates across the extinction boundary. Other ongoing work includes sedimentological and paleoenvironmental evaluation of a Silurian encrinite deposit, the Chicotte Formation, which is predominantly composed of crinoid debris.

Coastal exposures, Anticosti Island

Fossil crinoid (undescribed)

Silurian encrinites (Chicotte Fm.)

Coastal exposures, Anticosti Island

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Brooks Range, Alaska

Mississippian encrinites, Brooks Range

Structural deformation along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Brooks Range, Alaska

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The Lisburne Group is an extensive (up to ~700 m thick) sequence of dominantly carbonate Carboniferous-age rocks that extends throughout much of the northern Brooks Range of Arctic Alaska. These rocks accumulated in a shallow sea along the margin of the Arctic terrane when it was located between Siberia and Laurentia, making it a unique palogeographic region that is currently underrepresented in paleontological studies. A pilot study I conducted in 2017 identified a series of exposures for study, including an extensive encrinite deposit with a diverse crinoid and blastoid fauna. Future work aims to further document this encrinite, conduct taxonomic studies of crinoids and blastoids, and place this material into a broader paleobiogeographic context of Mississippian echinoderm evolution.