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 Jennifer McElwain, PhD
Geology Department
Associate Curator, Paleobotany
Jennifer McElwain is interested in the interactions between plant biodiversity and climate change in the geologic past. Specifically, she studies how changes in greenhouse gasses, such as carbon dioxide, can directly and indirectly (via greenhouse-induced global climate change) influence the relative abundances and diversity of different types of plants.
She studies three important intervals in Earth history: the Triassic-Jurassic boundary (about 200 million years ago); the late Early Jurassic (about 178 million years ago); and the early Late Cretaceous (about 90 million years ago). Each of these intervals is characterized by major extinction events among marine invertebrate organisms.
Studying past biodiversity using the fossil record is extremely difficult. Only a minute proportion of the Earth’s original biodiversity at any one interval in the past is preserved as fossils. Scientists also have to contend with the fact that the fossil record of animals and plants is full of bias towards organisms that have a high preservation and fossilization potential, such as hard- rather than soft-bodied organisms or, in the case of plants, abundant long-lived woody plants rather than rare annual herbs.
Dr. Jennifer McElwain Interview
“The fossil record can provide an excellent means with which to study changes in the relative diversity and relative abundance of different plant and animal groups through time. Such analyses enable us to track the ecological dominance of different plant groups through time and assess how climatic changes and changes in atmospheric composition affected these patterns.”
 To find out what plant fossils can tell us about the world in which dinosaurs first lived, take a look at the Dr. Jennifer McElwain Video created for the Evolving Planet exhibition.
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Continue to Dr. Peter Wagner. >>
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