Professor Dr. Julia Clarke

Biography

Julia Clarke is a Professor at the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, where she holds the John Katherine G. Jackson Chair in Geobiology. She is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. Her research primarily focuses on using phylogenetic methods and diverse data types to gain insights into the evolution of birds and avian flight. Particularly, she is interested in understanding the patterns and potential causal factors underlying the evolution of living bird lineages. Her work aim to unravel the origin and evolution of the avian vocal organ and the lab seeks new data to inform on avian diversity and distributions altered through deep histories. Clarke has conducted international fieldwork in locations such as Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Antarctica, Mongolia, and China to provide new fossil data that approach key evolutionary questions. Her areas of expertise include evolution, anatomical novelty, vertebrate paleontology, systematic biology, avian vocalization, and the evolution of flight among fossil birds and dinosaurs.

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