Beth Townsend, PhD, Lead PI
Midwestern University, Glendale, AZ - Beth has been working in the Uinta Basin since 1995, when she joined the lab of Tab Rasmussen to work on her doctoral degree. Since then Beth has spent almost every summer in the Uinta Basin collecting fossils first for her doctoral thesis and then she became a project PI when Dr. Dana Cope took over the project in 2004. Since 2006, she has been the lead PI bringing out field crews to collect fossils and other geological data. Additionally, numerous students, some who are now professional paleontologists, had their first field experience in the Uinta Basin during the field camps of 2004-2008.
At Midwestern University, Beth teaches anatomy to medical and other health sciences students as well as training students in research.
Beth's research includes evaluating mammalian community structure as a proxy for habitat and relating those habitat changes to regional and global climate shifts, studying the diets of extinct mammals using enamel microwear techniques, anatomical research of endangered living mammals, and developing anatomical atlases for animals such as the snow leopard, California sea lion, and dromedary.
Her research role on the project is to develop community structure profiles throughout the stratigraphic section in the basin, integrate the fossil collection with the geological aspect of the project (stratigraphy, isotope geochemistry) while in the field, and coordinate the project among the PIs, partner scientists, and partner institutions.
Paul Murphey, PhD, Co-PI
San Diego Natural History Museum – Paul first visited the Uinta Basin when he was working on his Ph.D. field work in the slightly older Bridger Formation located on the north side of the Uinta Mountains in Wyoming’s Green River Basin. Paul had known Beth since they were both students at CU Boulder, and he made numerous visits to the Uinta Basin prior to and during her Ph.D. field work and took an interest in the stratigraphy of the Uinta Basin. His interest was further fueled by his years of work as a paleontological consultant in the Basin, and he published on new fossil discoveries in the Duchesne River Formation their biochronological implications with Steve Walsh and Tom Kelly.
Paul’s research specialty is mammalian biostratigraphy, biochronology, paleoecology, and taphonomy with a focus on the Eocene, and most recently the Bridgerian and Uintan North American Land Mammal “Age” transition.
Paul’s responsibility on the team is the stratigraphic work. This involves studying the thick layer cake of strata deposited in lakes, rivers and on floodplains from roughly 46 to 38 million years ago. The sequence of clay, mud, silt, sand, and ash that comprises the Eocene rock units in the Uinta Basin and entombs the fossils preserved there needs to be documented in detail. The stratigraphy will provide a framework to which all the samples and data collected for the project will be tied. It will involve mapping, measuring and describing the rocks as well as associated relative positioning of fossil localities and collection of samples for zircon dating, oriented paleomagnetostratigraphy, palynology, and isotope analyses.
Anthony Friscia, PhD, Co-PI
University of California, Los Angeles - Tony has been collecting in the Uinta Basin since he graduated Washington University in St. Louis in 1994. His undergraduate advisor, Tab Rasmussen, asked him to join the field crew that summer, and he worked there regularly through the early 2000's, and continues to visit and work on the fossils from the Basin. His speciality is carnivorous mammals, and he has described new species of carnivores from the Eocene of Utah, and has also worked on carnivores from Kenya. The middle Eocene is an interesting time for carnivorous mammals in North America because you start to see the rise of true carnivorans (the ancestors of modern cats, dogs, weasels, etc.) and the decline in the extinct creodonts, the first group to fill the carnivorous mammal niche. By the end of the Eocene, most of the creodonts had gone extinct, and the carnivorans were starting to resemble the taxa we know today. At UCLA Tony's primary responsibility is teaching, and he teaches most of the undergraduate human anatomy courses as well as a number of general education courses on biology. On of his primary duties as part of the Uinta Basin Project is to bring non-science major undergraduate students to collect in the Basin as part of a summer class, and show them how we collect information about organisms and climates in the past, and how we can apply that to studies of our own future.
Laura Stroik, PhD, Co-PI
Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan – Laura is the most junior member of the project team and has been working on and off in the Uinta Basin since 2006. After her Masters, Laura decided she wanted to focus her dissertation research on early primates, and that is when her PhD advisor, Gary Schwartz, contacted his friend from graduate school, Beth Townsend, to see if she could take another student to the field. Over the years, Laura became more involved in the Uinta Basin project and was privileged to become a PI of the project after she received her PhD in 2014.
Laura’s research centers on quantitative methods for reconstructing species interactions in the (mostly Paleogene) mammalian fossil record. She has previously focused on dietary competition of early Eocene North American euprimates and their potential competitors (e.g., plesiadapiform primates, rodents, etc.) by analyzing dietary niche overlap using dental characteristics. However, she has also considered the effects of abiotic factors (e.g., temperature, precipitation) on changes in paleocommunity structure. The paleocommunity used in this research was that of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, and she looks forward to bringing this methodological expertise to the Uinta Basin. Thus, my primary role on the project is to quantify changes in community structure (if any) to help determine the extent to which the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO; 41.5-40 Ma) may have impacted the Uinta Basin paleocommunity.
Jim Westgate, PhD, Co-PI
I first conducted fieldwork in the Uinta Basin in 2004, as I was curious to see the type localities of the Uintan Land Mammal age. I had collected Uintan (Ui3) age specimens at the Casa Blanca community quarry in Laredo, TX from 1984-2009 (15+ tons of bulk samples) and wanted to see how the Texas sea level and Utah mountain basin communities compared. In 2007, a 1-ton test sample of the Ui3 WU-26 “Pond locality” showed that micro-mammals were present and my student crews from Lamar University from 2008-2019 processed an additional 37 tons of sample, yielding nearly 1000 complete mammal teeth and a few jaws. I plan to expand our screen-washing operations to other WU localities during the next three field seasons.
My academic training includes a B.S. in Geology from the College of William & Mary, with a senior thesis on a nearly complete middle Miocene cetothere skeleton of Thinocetus arthritis, I collected as a summer research intern in the Vertebrate Paleontology Section of the Dept. of Paleobiology at the U.S. National Museum. I also co-described with Frank Whitmore, a skeleton of a new species of Pliocene bowhead whale, Baleana ricei, as part of my duties as a research intern. I earned an M.S. degree in Geology from the University of Nebraska with my thesis research on a nearly complete skeleton of Aelurodon taxoides from the Miocene of Nebraska. I earned an M.S. in Biology from Missouri State University, with my thesis research on a late Eocene estuarine community from Jackson Group deposits in northeastern Arkansas. Screen-washing bulk samples yielded a diverse suite of invertebrates, sharks, reptiles, archeo-cete whales, and two land mammal species. My Geological Sciences Ph.D. dissertation involved bulk sampling and screen-washing 5-tons of mangrove estuarine, late middle Eocene, Laredo Formation deposits exposed in Laredo, TX. Remains of 30 species of late Uintan mammals, reptiles, sharks and bony fishes were recovered associated with a low-land rain forest and mangrove flora.
Penny Higgins, Ph.D., Consultant
I am a story-teller, an artist, and a scientist.
My story begins at an early age when I discovered my fondness for animals and their forms through art. By middle school, my interest in their skeletal anatomies grew and I could name most of the bones in their bodies. By high school, I discovered photography and considered pursuing art for a career but decided to pursue my fascination with fossils.
Today, I spend my time exploring Earth's natural history through the study of geochemistry of mammal fossils. I travel to localities all over the world, finding fossilized teeth and analyzing their enamel to better understand the environment and habits of long-extinct animals. This has taken me back in time millions of years to times when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, though I tend to stick to times well after the extinction of those fascinating giants.
As my love for learning continued to grow over the years so did my love for art and photography.
Now, I get to combine my passions through PaleoPix, a business in New York State dedicated to capturing and preserving the love of our pets and of nature.
As the owner of PaleoPix, I have the joy of helping people express their greatest passions for life and work through photography and illustration. And the best part is that I can continue to pursue science and share what I learn through art, photography, and outreach.