James Hagadorn

James Hagadorn is currently the Tim and Kathryn Ryan Curator of Geology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.  Although originally hailing from California he has been fortunate to have also lived in Pennsylvania, Montana, Massachusetts and Texas. Everything about “deep time” fascinates him, and he has spent the last twenty years studying modern and ancient environments all over the world.  Much of his research has focused on the latest part of the Precambrian (700-542 million years ago) and the early parts of the Paleozoic (542-450 million years ago), intervals of time that witnessed some of the most profound changes in environments and biota in all of earth history.  Through fieldwork, labwork, and collaboration with academic and citizen scientists, he has studied ancient sedimentary environments, large volcanic deposits, extinct soft-bodied fossils, trace fossils, bizarre microbial structures, and a variety of enigmatic ‘whatsits’.  Although this work contributes to improving our understanding of ancient earth systems, Hagadorn is cognizant of the need to leverage our understanding of ancient earth to better understand future earths.  In particular, how will our earth  change in the future, as a result of human activities?