Cassandra L. Knight
Department of Geosciences
Pennsylvania State University
University Park
Pennsylvania 16802 USA
knight.cassi@gmail.com
I graduated in 2012 with an M.S. in Geosciences from Pennsylvania State University, and previously with a B.S. in Geology from Colby College in Maine. My masters research focused on fossil rainforest leaves from Eocene Patagonia, especially the systematics, paleoecology, and paleobiogeography of fossil Laurales. I have also done leaf morphological assessment of the flora from Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument as a Geocorps Intern and have worked doing paleobotanical surveys at Grand Canyon National Park. In addition to Patagonia and the Western USA, I have also done field work in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. I now work for the National Park Service, coordinating National Fossil Day.
Peter Wilf
Department of Geosciences
Pennsylvania State University
University Park
Pennsylvania 16802 USA
pwilf@psu.edu
After an eclectic and non-geological undergrad career (B.A. Penn 1985), I spent three years teaching junior high school in New Jersey and then four years freelancing with my guitars in West Philly. I discovered geology and then paleobotany at the early age of 29 and have never looked back. I somehow moved from the street, almost literally, onto the doctoral track in Penn Geology and defended in 1998. Most of my thesis research was done in residence at the Smithsonian, on megafloral and paleoclimatic change across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary in southern Wyoming. During this time and in an ensuing Smithsonian postdoc, I began developing two major subsequent themes of my research: the fossil history of plant-insect associations and the unbelievable riches of Patagonian fossil floras. I spent three terrific years at Michigan, 1999-2002, as a Michigan Fellow and happily joined the Penn State Geosciences faculty in 2002, where I have been developing these and several other wonderful research projects with my students and colleagues all over the world.
