Gabriella Rossetto-Harris. Department of Geosciences and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA; Department of Earth Sciences, Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver, Colorado, 80205, USA; and Earth Sciences, Negaunee Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois 60605, USA. grossettoharris@gmail.com (corresponding author)
An internship at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado, during my undergraduate years pursuing Geology at Colorado College quickly shifted my interests from geochemistry to paleontology. After my undergraduate studies, I worked for two years immersed in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science as an intern and collections assistant in paleobotany. I fulfilled my dream of doing research in my father's homeland of Argentina with the completion of my M.Sc. and Ph.D. working on Eocene-Oligocene Patagonian Paleofloras at Penn State University with Dr. Peter Wilf and other collaborators at the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio and the Museo Paleontológico Bariloche. I am now an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biology investigating the rainforest affinities of fossils from the Paleocene Castle Rock flora, affiliated with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver, Colorado, and the Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois.
Peter Wilf. Department of Geosciences and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, 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 these and several other wonderful research projects have flourished with the help of my students and colleagues all over the world.
