Joe Mohan

I am a PhD student working with Dr. Jasmine Saros on the diatom record from Herd Lake, Idaho. My research interests involve using fossils to interpret paleoenvironments and paleoclimate change. As an undergraduate at Central Michigan University I participated in research projects in petrology, structural geology, petroleum geology, and most of all paleontology. Under the advisement of Dr. Reed Wicander, I completed a project using fossil polychaete jaws (scolecodonts) from the Devonian Gravel Point Formation of NW Michigan to aid in identifying a late Devonian extinction event that was likely caused by anoxic conditions of in the Michigan Basin when it was cut off from the rest of the Rheic Ocean. After Graduating with a B.S. in Geology I work at Pace Analytical, an environmental laboratory, for one year before starting graduate school.

I completed an M.S. in Earth Science from Indiana State University. There, Dr. Jeffery Stone introduced me to the wonderful world of diatoms. My research was centered around the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) which is an international effort of over 40 senior scientist and laboratories investigating the climate history of human and early hominin evolution in East Africa. My project was a diatom based paleoenvironmental reconstruction of Paleolake Hadar from the Pliocene Hadar Formation. I also described three new species of diatom from this formation.

Now I aim to use novel tactics to reconstruct drought and other climate variability of Idaho for the past ~2000 years.