Understanding the Fossil Record of Evolution: From Darwin to Today

Gene Hunt is a distinguished lecturer with the Paleontological Society. His research focuses on how short-term ecological and evolutionary changes translate into the long-term patterns that paleontologists can see in the fossil record. Hunt is the curator of Ostracoda at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. He studies the ecological response of deep-sea crustaceans to the more recent rapid climate change and the evolutionary response, shown in body size, to more long-term, sustained climate changes. His research explores how evolution by natural selection should look in the geological record as well as how fast lineages and communities change in the fossil record. Hunt earned his PhD from the University of Chicago.Part of the Department of Geological & Atmospheric Sciences Distinguished Lecture Series.