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Student develops research technique

March 14, 2011

University Relations

Ben Gaglioti, a PhD student working with Professor Matthew Wooller in the and the ������ , has developed a new technique for understanding what vegetation grew in Alaska tens of thousands of years ago. Gaglioti examined fossilized grass leaves for clues about the ecology of Alaska when, now extinct, bison (amongst a host of other large fauna) roamed Alaska at the time part area known as Beringia – when the land bridge between Russia and Alaska existed.

Gaglioti’s work was recently published in the Review of Paleobotany and Palynology, “Developing graminoid cuticle analysis for application to Beringian Palaeoecology.” He is also a contributor to another paper with Matthew Wooller as lead author to appear soon in Journal of Quaternary Science, “The detailed paleoecology of a mid-Wisconsinan interstadial  (~32,000 ¹⁴C years) vegetation surface from interior Alaska.”