January Program – Gabi Rossetto-Harris

Speaker:  Gabi Rosetto Harris

Paleontologist, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument

In her talk at the January WIPS meeting, Gabi will share her recent research on the Paleocene Castle Rock, Colorado Flora, give an overview of the paleontology of Florissant Fossil Beds, and discuss the upcoming research projects going on at Florissant.

About the speaker: During her undergraduate years pursuing a B.A. in Geology at Colorado College, Gabi completed a Mosaics in Science internship at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (2014), which quickly shifted her interests from geochemistry to paleontology. She then spent two years immersed in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science as a paleontology field and research intern and later promoted to a collections assistant in paleobotany (2015-2017). Gabi fulfilled her dream of doing research in her father’s homeland of Argentina with the completion of a M.Sc. and Ph.D. working on Eocene-Oligocene Patagonian fossil plants at Penn State University (2017-2023), where she described and curated fossil plants at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian) and Argentine museums, the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio and the Museo Paleontológico Bariloche. Following her doctoral studies, Gabi was awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology. This allowed her to spend the last nine months investigating the rainforest affinities of fossils from the Paleocene Castle Rock flora in Colorado, while affiliated with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver, Colorado, and the Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois. Gabi is now thrilled to be returning to Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument for her first permanent federal position. As the successor to Dr. Herb Meyer, who recently retired, she is the paleontology program manager and museum curator at FLFO.