Celina Suarez, associate professor in the Department of Geosciences, recently received a $587,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for research that will greatly expand what we know about the profound changes to both land and animals that took place about 100 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous Period.

"We're interested in looking at how different tectonic and global climate changes occurred in this time period -- what's the record of it, how quickly did things change and how did that affect the evolution of all the different types of dinosaurs that you get into the Late Cretaceous," Suarez says in the newest edition of Short Talks From the Hill, a podcast of the University of Arkansas.

Suarez specializes in re-creating ancient environmental conditions from the geochemistry of fossils. Her work centers on how catastrophic events such as asteroid impacts or volcanic eruptions influence atmospheric carbon.

“What we're trying to do is compare the climate change that happens,” Suarez says. “Where do you have big changes in temperature or changes in precipitation pattern? How well does that correlate to fossil turnover of animals?”

Listen to this edition of Short Talks From the Hill at Research Frontiers, the home of research news at the University of Arkansas, or visit the "On Air" and "Programs" link at KUAF.com. Previous podcasts can be found under the Short Talks From the Hill link at the Research Frontiers website.

Short Talks From the Hill highlights research and scholarly work at the University of Arkansas. Each segment features a university researcher discussing his or her work. Thank you for listening!