Dori Contreras

Dori Contreras
Perot Museum of Nature and Science · Paleontology

Doctor of Philosophy

About

23
Publications
8,414
Reads
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342
Citations
Additional affiliations
September 2019 - present
Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Position
  • Curator of Paleobotany
October 2018 - August 2019
University of California, Berkeley
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Education
August 2012 - August 2018
University of California, Berkeley
Field of study
  • Integrative Biology
August 2008 - May 2012
Texas State University
Field of study
  • Biology, emphasis Botany

Publications

Publications (23)
Article
Full-text available
Over the past two decades a significant wood flora has been discovered from the Ash Canyon Member of the Crevasse Canyon Formation (Campanian) and the Jose Creek Member of the McRae Formation (Maastrichtian). To date, at least 10 types of dicots, three types of monocots, and 7 types of conifers are known from approximately 30 sectioned specimens. W...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The diversification of angiosperms and their ecological radiation had profound effects on forest structure and composition. Late Cretaceous floras spanning the North American Western Interior (WI) document important patterns, notably that increases in taxonomic diversity of angiosperms appear to have outpaced increases in their ecological diversity...
Article
Full-text available
For more than two centuries, biodiversity collections have served as the foundation for scientific investigation of and education about life on Earth (Melber and Abraham 2002, Cook et al. 2014, Funk 2018). The collections that have been assembled in the past and continue to grow today are a cornerstone of our national heritage that have been treate...
Article
Full-text available
Premise of research. A new Early Jurassic species of Cupressaceae is reconstructed from the Cañadón Asfalto Formation in Argentina, based on impressions of foliage and attached and dispersed seed and pollen cones. Methodology. Over 230 specimens were examined using reflected-light microscopy and epifluorescence. Relevant extant taxa were studied f...
Article
During the last two decades, a wealth of data on biodiversity and associated environments has been mobilized in digital form. Collectively, these data provide a powerful resource that when curated and integrated with intention, can provide critical information to address emerging complex global biological, environmental, and public health challenge...
Article
Full-text available
Conifers of the taxodiaceous grade of Cupressaceae were more diverse and widespread during the Mesozoic than they are today. The earliest diverging subfamily, Cunninghamioideae, only includes a single extant genus, but has at least 10 fossil genera. Here, two additional cunninghamioid genera are characterized on the basis of permineralized seed con...
Article
Full-text available
Phylogenetic divergence-time estimation has been revolutionized by two recent developments: 1) total-evidence dating (or "tip-dating") approaches that allow for the incorporation of fossils as tips in the analysis, with their phylogenetic and temporal relationships to the extant taxa inferred from the data, and 2) the fossilized birth-death (FBD) c...
Preprint
Full-text available
Phylogenetic divergence-time estimation has been revolutionized by two recent developments: 1) total-evidence dating (or “tip-dating”) approaches that allow for the incorporation of fossils as tips in the analysis, with their phylogenetic and temporal relationships to the extant taxa inferred from the data, and 2) the fossilized birth-death (FBD) c...
Article
Full-text available
Compared to the osteological record of herbivorous dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation of northern Alaska, there are relatively fewer remains of theropods. The theropod record from this unit is mostly comprised of isolated teeth, and the only non-dental remains known can be attributed to the troodontid cf. Troodon and the tyra...
Article
Full-text available
Premise of the Study This article provides a workflow and protocol for paleobotanical researchers that integrates project‐based fossil leaf specimen and data collection with curation and digitization. The methods aim to facilitate efficient digitization of new collections by researchers during the course of their study and promote public databasing...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Seed dispersal shapes ecological and evolutionary patterns by controlling the geographic distribution of taxa, the gene flow and genetic structure of populations, and the biotic interactions of ecosystems. Morphological aspects of plant diaspores (the unit of dispersal consisting of the seed and accessory structures) reflect important aspects of th...
Conference Paper
The integration of curation and digitization with project-focused data collection is a key component to performing time-efficient studies from new fossil collections. Standard workflows for processing fossil specimens starting from initial field collection and continuing through digital analysis/measurement are not widely established, and most work...
Article
Full-text available
The Pennsylvanian-Permian transition has been inferred to be a time of significant glaciation in the Southern Hemisphere, the effects of which were manifested throughout the world. In the equatorial regions of Pangea, the response of terrestrial ecosystems was highly variable geographically, reflecting the interactions of polar ice and geographic p...
Conference Paper
The evolutionary history of redwoods (Sequoioid clade of the Cupressaceae) is currently unresolved by both molecular and fossil data, particularly in regards to the patterns of character evolution and the order of divergence of taxa. These investigations have been complicated by the antiquity of the lineage and extinctions, with modern genera repre...
Conference Paper
Plant functional groups are being used extensively in trait-based ecology for understanding the differential abundance and ecological breadth of species in regenerating tropical forests. To this end, species have been assigned to habitat specificity classifications—old-growth specialists, secondary-growth specialists, and generalists—based upon rel...

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