Bio:

Jason Moore works on the boundary of the biological and geological sciences, trying to understand the processes that control the preservation of fossils (taphonomy) and how those processes affect our ability to interpret the ecology of the ecosystems that have been extinct for millions of years. He mostly focuses on vertebrate fossils (animals with backbones) preserved around times of major perturbation in the Earth’s history, like periods of climate change, meteorite impacts, etc.

After studying for his undergraduate degrees and Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, Jason took two postdoctoral fellowships at Texas A&M University and Dartmouth College before moving to UNM. His research has taken him and his students all over the world, including to numerous sites in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, India, Uruguay and, most recently, Paraguay. In addition to his research and teaching at UNM, he is an Associate Editor for the journal PALAIOS.

In the Honors College, Jason teaches interdisciplinary classes with one foot in the sciences, aiming to help students build the communication, critical thinking, and creative thinking skills that will help them successfully address whatever challenges life sends their way. Particularly, many of his courses contain high immersion in genuine scientific research (answering problems to which the answer is not known) and focus on getting hands-on with fossils and rocks.

Research Interest:

Taphonomy; palaeoecology; sedimentology; quantitative methods; the pedagogy of research.