Greg Retallack is an award-winning paleobotanist at the University of Oregon, where he has been on the faculty since 1981. His research group is dedicated to the proposition that soils have a fossil record, like other living things. Past studies have considered the role of soils in ape and human evolution in Kenya, grassland evolution in North America, dinosaur extinction in Montana, angiosperm evolution in Kansas, Late Permian mass extinction in Antarctica, and evolution of trees and tetrapods in Pennsylvania. Current and future studies concern Cambrian explosion on land, Precambrian life on land and martian paleosols, with fieldwork in Newfoundland and Australia. He recently wrote a paper for the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, “Global Cooling by Grassland Soils of the Geological Past and Near Future.“
Greg Retallack
