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Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, Visitors, and VolunteersPaleobotany & Palynology Group Photo (January 26, 2010)
Back row: Fabiany Herrera, Qi Wang, Hongshan Wang, Terry Lott, David Jarzen, Steve ManchesterFront row: Paula Mejia, Aom (Nareerat) Boonchai, Hui Jia, Hao Wu, Jane Blanchard |
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Florida Museum of Natural History
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Advisor: Dr. Steve Manchester Ph.D. student (Paleontology and stratigraphy), Jilin University Advisor: Prof. Sun Ge |
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E-mail: nboonchai@flmnh.ufl.edu, n_finix@yahoo.com I am interested in biology and paleontology. I have done my master degree
research on biodiversity of Cenozoic petrified wood in Nakhon Ratchasima,
northeastern Thailand, supervised by Dr. Paul J. Grote at Suranaree University
of Technology (SUT). I have done comparative anatomical structure of fossil
wood with the modern wood to look at the diversity of ancient trees and
interpret paleoenvironment in the study area. My current research here
at Paleobotany of FLMNH is working on fossil leave cuticles of Lauraceae
from Puryear sandpit, Tennessee and I also interested in studying fossil
wood from Wyoming. |
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DAVID M. JARZEN is a Research Scientist in Paleobotany and Palynology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, Florida. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he grew up in northern Ohio gaining an early interest in biology and natural history of the cool-temperate environment. He earned his B.S. degree in 1967 from Kent State University majoring in Biological Sciences, and two years later received his M.A. degree in Botany from the same institution. In 1973 he was awarded the Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Toronto. His research interests in the nature of extant and fossil plant life,
have provided extensive field work in all regions of Canada and the United
States, as well as Europe, Zambia, Cameroon, Panama, Mexico, Colombia,
Puerto Rico, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Fiji, and to several localities
within Australia. The focus of his work incorporates a global view towards
understanding the evolution of plant life during the Earth's history,
with an emphasis on fossil floras recorded from the Tertiary of Florida
and the Caribbean. His publications of scientific papers number over 240,
including both professional papers and popular articles. Some of his photography
and illustrations have been seen in Scientific American, The Owl Magazine,
other popular publications, on the Internet, and in museum displays in
Canada, Australia and the USA. His work has been incorporated in several
radio and television productions including CBC's "Nature of Things"
with David Suzuki, the PBS NOVA Series, the NHK (Japan) Series "The
Miracle Planet", the National Film Board of Canada, the Discovery
Channel and other North American cable networks. David has been a member of 23 learned scientific societies, including the prestigious Explorer’s Club, as well as the honorary scientific society, Sigma Xi. He has served the scientific community and general public through many slide lectures, videos, CD ROMs, and popular publications. The Palynology and Paleobotany databases at the Canadian Museum of Nature (Ottawa, Canada) were designed and developed by David in co-operation with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) and have been used as the hallmark for all collection databases at the Canadian Museum of Nature. At the Florida Museum of Natural History (University of Florida) he completed
the restructuring of the 250,000 specimens of the Paleobotany/Palynology
Collections, including a 7,200 specimen collection of extant reference
pollen slides, and has raised their standards for research and display
to a par with other quality museums. While at the Marie Selby Botanical
Gardens in Sarasota, (2002-2003), he enriched the cultural level of educational
programs and introduced the gardens and the community to internationally
respected speakers through his speakers bureau and lecture series. In
2003, David was elected as Fellow National to the Explores Club, and in
2005 he was elected Fellow of the Ohio Academy of Science. David is listed
in American Men and Women of Science, Who’s Who in Ontario (Canada), Who’s
Who in Canadian Science, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, as well
as Who's Who in America and Who’s Who in the World. His extra-curricular
activities include music that enhances the soul, nature photography, satirical
writing, botanical illustration, and all aspects of natural history. With
his best friend and wife, Susan, he explores the natural history of the
south-eastern United States at every opportunity. See Dr. Jarzen's Research Interests and Curriculum Vitae in PDF and HTML format. |
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Florida Museum of Natural History MAJOR RESEARCH INTERESTS
Research Interests and Curriculum Vitae or Visit Dr. Kowalski at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ekowalsk |
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Florida Museum of Natural History Research Interests and Duties
Duties:
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Collection Manager of Paleobotany/Palynology Florida Museum of Natural History
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Research Center for Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, The Chinese Academy of Sciences
Photo courtesy of Dr. David Dilcher |
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Carlos Jaramillo’s Research Group Email: fherrera@flmnh.ufl.edu
Collecting Paleocene fossil leaves in Colombia My research focuses on the evolutionary origin of the South American rainforests by looking at plant macrofossils. I am interested to know when and how the tropical rainforests appeared in the Neotropics, what mechanisms have produced the high species diversity and the characteristic family composition. I want to reconstruct the paleoclimatic, paleoecological and paleobiogeographical conditions under which the ancient Neotropical rainforest flourished, particularly during the Late Cretaceous, Paleogene and Middle Miocene. I am also interested on the systematic and taxonomy of Neotropical fossil plants.
Wing, S.L., Herrera, F., Jaramillo, C., Gomez, C., Wilf, P., and Labandeira, C.C. 2009. Late Paleocene fossils from the Cerrejón Formation, Colombia, are the earliest record of Neotropical Rainforest. PNAS 106: 18627-18632. |
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Ph.D. student, Department of Botany Paula Mejia-Velasquez I am interested in determining the floristic patterns of angiosperms and other groups of plants on tropical latitudes during the early radiation of angiosperms using palynology (Lower and Mid Cretaceous), and to infer how those patterns may be related to climate. For my research I will analyze palynological samples from several low latitude sites in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Surinam, Cameroon, Nigeria and Egypt. I plan to reconstruct the floristic composition of each site and use that floristic composition as a proxy to infer the dominant climatic conditions of each site. Then I plan to use the resulting climatic information to determine the main climatic patterns on the tropics during the unparallel diversification of angiosperms. The results of my research will provide information of the environmental and floristic conditions of tropical latitudes during the fast diversification of flowering plants. This will provide tools to better understand angiosperm evolution: how and under which conditions early angiosperms radiated and diversified in the tropics. |
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Advisor: Dr. Steven Manchester jchen(add "@botany.ufl.edu" to end) Research: Phylogeny of the grape family (Vitaceae) based on morphology. I am investigating features of flower, fruit, stem, pollen, seeds, and development as they are distributed among modern and fossil species of Vitaceae to gain an improved understanding of phylogeny and improved classification of this family which is now widely distributed in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. In the past few years my work in paleobotany has included a review of
the fossil seed record of water lilies (Nymphaeceae) with emphasis on
a new species we recovered from the Eocene of Shandong Province, Northeastern
China (Chen et al, 2004), and I have made a palynological investigations
of the Middle Eocene Huadian flora of Jilin Province, Northeastern China
using micromanipulation techniques to study isolated fossil pollen grains
by both Scanning Electron and Light microscopy. Steven R. Manchester and Iju Chen. 2006. Tetracentron Fruits from the Miocene of Western North America. International Journal of Plant Sciences, 167(3): 601-605. Iju Chen, Steven R. Manchester, and Zhiduan Chen. 2004. Anatomically preserved seeds of Nuphar (Nymphaeaceae) from the Early Eocene of Wutu, Shandong Province, China. American Journal of Botany 91: 1265-1272. Mohammed Bendahmane, Judit Szécsi, Iju Chen, R. Howard Berg, and Roger N. Beachy. 2002. Characterization of mutant tobacco mosaic virus coat protein that interferes with virus cell-to-cell movement. PNAS 99: 3645-3650. |
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Graduate Research Professor [Retired] Address: 525 N.E. Boulevard Gainesville, FL 32601-5466, U.S.A. Email: paleoleo@yahoo.com |
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Master of Science in Geology Advisor: Dr. David Dilcher My interests are in the fields of Paleobiology and Paleoecology, with emphasis in Paleobotany. I am interested in biotic diversity, its causes and how it relates to ecological stability. I am also interested in how vegetation communities have responded to environmental crises in the present and geological past. I would like to approach these questions using paleobiological information by applying mathematical and statistical methods and by constructing theoretical models to understand the dynamics of the vegetal communities in the geological past. I think this information can help us to understand modern communities and their response to the present environmental presures. I’m planning to work in several questions:
Current address: Lider Grupo Bioestratigrafia |
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Master of Science, Department of Botany Fossil history of winged fruits. |
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PALYNOMORPHS AND SELECTED MESOFOSSILS FROM THE CRETACEOUS DAKOTA FORMATION,
MINNESOTA, USA The middle cenomanian palynomorphs and selected mesofossils from the Dakota Formation of south central Minnesota were investigated. A total of 218 of palynomorphs were recovered. Terrestrial palynomorphs include 41 types of angiosperm pollen in which six types are described as new species, 42 types of gymnosperm pollen, and 78 types of spores of fern and fern allies. Spores of fern and fern allies are most diverse among the terrestrial palynomorphs. Other palynomorphs include two types of megaspores, ten types of algal spores and colonies, seven types of fungal spores and fruiting body, 18 types of dinoflagellate cysts, and 20 types of acritachs. Based upon the occurrence of Artiopollis indivisus, Balmeisporites glenelgensis, Cicatricosisporites crassiterminatus, Dictyophyllidites impensus, and Nyssapollenites sp., the age of the Cretaceous sediments exposed in south central Minnesota is probably middle Cenomanian. Pollen analysis indicates that wind-pollinated angiosperms probably were not dominant around coastal lakes, swamps, and the inland meandering river areas during middle Cenomanian. There are distinct angiosperm species gradients from coastal areas to inland meandering river areas. Also the coastal lake areas appear to have higher angiosperm diversity than that in the inland meandering river areas. The characteristic vegetational elements of the coastal swamps during middle Cenomanian were diverse angiosperms, dominant ferns and fern allies, and a relative low abundance of gymnosperms. The Trochodendrales and Buxales of the eudicots, which were not recovered from leaf fossil records, probably were present during middle Cenomanian based upon the angiosperm pollen records. Two new marattioid ferns, Goolangia minnesotensis Hu, Dilcher, H. Schneid. et Jarzen gen. et sp. nov. and Mesozoisynangia trilobus Hu, Dilcher, H. Schneid. et Jarzen gen. et sp. nov., are described based on charcoalified isolated sporangia and synangia. These fossils provide evidence for the existence of marattioid ferns during the mid-Cretaceous in North America and give the first unequivocal documentation of the Marattiaceae in post Jurassic times. Spores of Goolangia minnesotensis are comparable with the dispersed spore Dictyophyllidites impensus, which was distributed from Arizona to Alberta in west central North America during middle Cenomanian. |
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| Visiting Scientist, Fulbright Fellowship Mohamed Ibrahim is a visiting scientist and Fulbright Grantee at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, Florida. He is a Professor of Palynology and Applied micropaleontology at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science of the Alexandria University, Egypt. He obtained his Ph.D in palynology and micropaleontology in 1993 from the Alexandria University and the Technical University of Berlin through a combined channel program. He has authored more than thirty research articles covered the palynology, micropaleontology and paleoecolgy of Egypt, Libya and Qatar. He worked as a part time palynostratigraphic consultant for GEOEX-Egypt (1994-1996). He was the national coordinator and member of the IGCP 831 "South Atlantic Mesozoic Correlation". He is a member in many geologic and biostratigraphic societies as AASP, BMS, GSE and ESQUA. In 1998, his department awarded the Sultan Qaboos Prize for environmental achievement. In 2003, he awarded the Alexandria University Scientific Prize in Geological Sciences and in 2004, he awarded the Egypt State Prize in Geological Science. See Dr. Ibrahim's Research Interests, list of publication and Curriculum Vitae. |
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MS, 2004, Department of Botany. Advisor: Dr. Steven Manchester Corbett, Sarah Lynn, 2004. The Middle Miocene Alum Bluff flora, Liberty County, Florida. MS Thesis, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, 96pp. Sarah Lynn Corbett Abstract The Miocene flora of Alum Bluff, Liberty County, Florida, is significant because of the relative rarity of Tertiary, and especially Miocene, fossil plant localities in eastern North America. After conducting a paleofloristic study including leaves, seeds, fruits, and pollen at Alum Bluff, implications for understanding Miocene climate, biogeography, and paleoecology of the region were inferred. The first study of the flora of the Alum Bluff site was conducted on leaf impressions by E.W. Berry in the early twentieth century. Berry studied only leaf macrofossils and identified 12 leaf species. Recent collections and further examination of specimens reveals 22 identified taxa, seven morphotypes of uncertain taxonomic affinity, and 21 examples of unknown taxonomic affinity are also present in the flora. Berry described the flora as being tropical with some temperate elements found in the Florida panhandle today; however, recent finds such as Paliurus, which is extinct in North America but present in Eurasia today, suggest different floristic affinities and indicate that the flora was warm-temperate. The composition of the flora was compared with modern floras and other Miocene floras to determine the environmental conditions present at Alum Bluff in the Miocene. It was found that the Alum Bluff flora an elm-hickory-cabbage palm forest (similar to that of North central Florida today) occurring along a river or near a river delta. Biogeographical implications of the Florida panhandle region during the Miocene were inferred based on the floral composition of Alum Bluff. The use of fruit, seeds, pollen, and leaves increased the known diversity of the Alum Bluff flora, making it a paleobotanically important case. |
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Bainian Sun |
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Dakota Formation is bonanza for paleobotany. It yielded not only varieties
of meagfossils, microfossils and mesofossils, but also yielded many exceptionally
well preserved fossils --- CYTOPLASM FOSSILS. This is the major discovery
in my PhD program. The preservation is somehow related to a frequently
seen but long ignored phenomenon --- lightning. It is expected more interesting
progresses to be made soon. If you had any interest in this kind of fossil,
please hit this link to check whether my interpretation is reasonable
or not. |
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"Comparative anatomy and fine structure of the representative Mesozoic plants" The ongoing research project here in the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida entitled "Comparative anatomy and fine structure of the representative Mesozoic plants" has three parts: 1) Further study of the structurally preserved fossil wood from the Late Jurassic in Junggar Basin, Xinjiang, China. It is expected to examine the wood anatomy so as to determine the predominately trees and their systematic relationships. The taphonomy of fossil tree deposition , the ecology of ancient forest and palaeoclomate implications are being investigated using multiple approaches. 2). Investigations of some reproductive material from the Early Cretaceous Dakota Formation of Northern America, including fertile structures, fructifications and fruits . 3). Fine structures and anatomy of the Early Jurassic plants from southern China, including a couple of genera belonging to three types of plants (ferns, bennettitaleans and ginkgoaleans). Most of preliminary results have already been fulfilled in China. The current work will emphasis on further comparison with relevant fossil plants in Northern America and related extant plants so as to imply their evolutionary and phylogenetic significances. All above researches will be guided by the academic thoughts of "fossil plant biology" as well as "fine structure and whole-plant reconstruction". Several new and advanced methods (such as SEM, TEM and ultra-sections, form-function analysis and growth habitat, etc) will be utilized for revealing the relationships of structures, evolution and environmental implications of the represented Mesozoic plants. |
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Email: dengmin@mail.kib.ac.cn or dengmin_botany@hotmail.com
Sep. 2001 – Present. Kunming Institute of Botany, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, PH.D. candidate. Research instrests: Plant taxonomy, conservation biology, phylogeny and Botanical nomenclature, Phylogeny & Biogeography on Quercus subg. Cyclobalanopsis. Dr. Wolfram Michael Kürschner and Dr. Friederike Wagner from Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Photo courtesy of Dr. David DilcherDr. Harald Schneider from Albrecht-von-Haller Institute of Plant Sciences, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany (March 2005)
Photo courtesy of Dr. David DilcherDr. Sun Ge from Jilin University, China (April 28 to May 6, 2005)
Photo courtesy of Dr. David Jarzen
Dr. Sun is a professor from Jilin University, China.
Dr. Wang Qi from Research Center for Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, The Chinese Academy of Sciences (February 2005)
Photo courtesy of Dr. David Dilcher |
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Updated February 3, 2010 |
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