SCVAS Speaker Series: Julia Clarke

The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs

The deep history of traits we think of as distinctly avian.

How do we study evolutionary novelty in deep time? What can dinosaurs teach us about how novel structures and functions evolve?

Julia A. Clarke is John A. Wilson Professor in Vertebrate Paleontology at the Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. She has published over 100 papers including 14 in the journals Nature and Science. She is interested in how new structures and functions arise in deep time with a focus on the evolution of dinosaurs including birds. She has an international field program in paleontology (e.g. in Antarctica, South America, Asia) as well as leading highly interdisciplinary collaborative teams integrating data on living animals to ask new questions of the fossil record. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Humboldt Foundation, The National Geographic Society, Explorers Club, AAAS, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and has been covered by NPR’s Science Friday, The New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic Magazine, NOVA, and other outlets. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, American Ornithological Society, and The Anatomical Society. She received her degrees from Brown University (B.A) and Yale University (PhD).