Camilla Crifò

I collected my first leaves when I was a kid, in the gardens of Rome (Italy), where I grew up. With the help of my mother and a botany book I used to draw and classify the species and to stick their leaves on the pages of a notebook, my first herbarium. I also enjoyed collecting the leaf "skeletons" (you know when there is nothing left of a leaf but the venations?) that sometimes can be found on the floor made of fallen autumn leaf.

I became passionate about plants and natural history, and I decided to do an undergraduate degree in Biology, and a Masters in Paleontology at the University of Montpellier (France).

After my masters I wanted to discover the tropical rainforest, and I spent a year and a half in Panama working as an intern at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute to study modern and fossil leaves and leaf venations.

I moved to the US (Ohio) in 2011 and I did a Master degree in Geology to learn more about the rocks that contain the leaf fossils.

I am currently a PhD student at University of Washington where I study Paleobotany and Paleoecology. In particular, I am interested in reconstructing how vegetation responded to climatic and environmental changes through time.

My current research tool is phytolith analysis - phytoliths are microscopic silica bodies produced by plants that accumulate and fossilize in ancient sediments and soil.

Caroline Strömberg

I'm Camilla's academic advisor. I've been fascinated by the evolution of life on Earth since I was a little girl in Sweden. I vividly remember finding my first fossil (a trilobite) on the shores of Gotland (a Swedish island featuring some amazing Silurian reefs), which led me to, for the first time ponder the depths of geologic time. Initially I wanted to study how vertebrate communities on land had changed over millions of years in response to environmental change. However, I soon realized that plants are the key to understanding much about terrestrial ecosystem change and vertebrate evolution, and switched my studies to paleobotany (study of fossil plants).

I've focused much of my work on understanding the evolution of grasses and the spread of grasslands during the last ~80 million years (Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic). For this work, I have mainly used plant silica (phytoliths) as a source of information about past vegetation. Because phytoliths is a relatively new tool in paleobotany, a lot of work is needed to develop it. That is what Camilla is doing with her dissertation and with this project! Her work is incredibly important for documenting the spatial resolution of the phytolith record. Ultimately, the outcome of this study will allow researchers to more precisely reconstruct vegetation variability, which is vital for understanding, for example, controls on biodiversity through Earth history.