Rory Sweedler

Rory's research focuses on how mountain building generates terrestrial biodiversity hotspots and how those hotspots are recorded in the rock record. For her dissertation, she is exploring these interactions between biotic and abiotic processes in Upper Cretaceous strata of the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming, just prior to the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, to investigate how biodiversity hotspots may have mediated mammalian survivability over the most recent mass extinction. She integrates methods including taxonomy, geometric morphometrics as a measure of morphological disparity, sequence stratigraphy, and taphonomy to investigate the taxonomic diversity and ecological disparity of mammals and how changes in depositional environment may have influenced both the animals living in those environments and the ways their fossils are preserved. In her free time, Rory enjoys hiking, photography, ballet, and ushering for theater and dance performances on campus.