Warren D. Allmon
Paleontological Research Institution
1259 Trumansburg Road
Ithaca, NY 14850

After receiving his doctoral degree, Warren served for four years as assistant professor of geology at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He came to Ithaca in 1992 as director of the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), renewing its historic connections with Cornell.

His major research interest is the ecology of the origin and maintenance of biological diversity--why there are the number of species we see where and when we do--and the application of the geological record to the study of these problems. He is particularly interested in the systematics, ecology, and evolution of Cenozoic mollusks, especially the marine snail family Turritellidae, their patterns of origination and extinction over the last 100 million years, and the environmental and ecological contexts of these patterns. He has most recently been working on the paleoceanography and paleoclimate of the Western Atlantic ocean during the last 10-20 million years, and the possible influence of paleoceanographic conditions on the evolution of mollusks in this region. He is particularly interested in the effects of nutrient changes on origination and extinction patterns in the marine realm and beyond. This work attempts to integrate isotopic, stratigraphic, and paleontological data into a comprehensive picture of paleoenvironment and to use these multiple data sources to test hypotheses of environmental causes for evolutionary events.