Dr. Julia Clarke

Biography

Julia Clarke is a Professor and the Jackson Chair in Geobiology at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on using phylogenetic methods and diverse types of data to gain insights into the evolution of birds and avian flight. She is particularly interested in understanding shared patterns and potential causal factors in the evolution of living bird lineages. Her work includes unraveling the origin and evolution of the avian vocal organ, and her lab seeks new data to inform avian diversity and distributions that have changed through deep histories. Clarke's extensive fieldwork in international collaborations has taken her to places such as Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Antarctica, Mongolia, and China, where she has provided new fossil data to approach critical questions in her field. She completed her Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics at Yale University in 2002 after earning her B.A. in Geo-Biology and Comparative Literature from Brown University in 1995. Clarke has held several editorial positions and is active in various scientific societies.

Research Interests