Jansen recently completed his PhD at Cornell University (USA) in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and will provide scientific support for the project. To begin, he will evaluate the Big Questions submitted by the global paleontology community to identify common themes and major areas of interest.
Jansen’s primary research interests are conservation paleobiology and paleoecology. For his dissertation, he studied molluscan death assemblages and their living counterparts in the Colorado River estuary (Mexico) to evaluate how interactions and structure in the molluscan community changed due to recent human actions, including upstream dam construction and water diversions.
Jansen collecting samples in the Colorado River estuary.
Working across timescales, Jansen enjoys developing new approaches, and adapting approaches from other fields, to increase the strength of inference drawn from paleontological data.
Jansen is also passionate about communicating and teaching paleontology to help others build a greater appreciation for the past history of life and the context it can provide for what we see in the world around us today.