Trail Talks: The Evolution of the Modern Flora of California

Humans live in the present, but the world we walk through has been constantly changing over geologic time. Join paleobotanist Bruce Tiffney to explore the evolution of the plant life of California over the past 100 million years from its warm, wet, and subtropical past to its current Mediterranean climate and familiar modern flora.

Bruce has a degree in Geology from Boston University and a PhD from Harvard University in plants systematics, morphology, and evolution. After nine years at Yale University, he joined the geology faculty at UCSB in 1986 and the College of Creative Studies Biology faculty in 1990, also serving as the Dean of CCS from 2005-2016. His research focuses on several aspects of the evolution of plants in the geologic past. Appropriate to this presentation, one of these is the evolution of the flora of the Northern Hemisphere in the last 65 million years.

Disclaimer(s) 

Participants in this event may be photographed by Library staff. These photos may be used in promotional or educational publications, including in print, social media, and presentations. Please see staff if you do not consent to having your photo taken. Staff will obtain individual, signed photo releases of photographs that contain only an individual as opposed to a group.