Athens, Ga. – Kirk Johnson, author of four books and chief curator and vice president of research and collections at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science will speak on the University of Georgia campus Feb. 27.
Johnson will deliver a lecture titled “Crocodiles in Greenland and Hippos in London: A Fossil-Fueled Tour of Past and Future Climates” in room 200A of the geology-geography building at 3:30 p.m. His presentation is part of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Distinguished Lecture series.
Kirk Johnsonjoined the Denver Museum in 1991 after earning his doctorate in geology and paleobotany from Yale University. He studies fossil plants and dinosaur extinction, among many topics, and has published many popular and scientific articles on topics ranging from fossil plants and modern rainforests to the ecology of whales and walruses.
Since 1997, he has supervised the Denver Basin Project, a multidisciplinary National Science Foundation-funded effort to understand and interpret the paleontology, geology and hydrology of the rocks beneath Denver. This work has led to the discovery and analysis of a 64 million-year-old tropical rainforest in Colorado. His research has also taken him to Alaska’s Bering Sea, the Brazilian Amazon, the Canadian High Arctic, the rainforests of New Zealand, the Gobi Desert, India, China and Patagonia.