Jake Wilson

Associate Professor, Curator of the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History

Education

Colorado School of Mines

B.S. Biochemistry 

University of Denver

M.S. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Ph.D. Functional Anatomy and Evolution

Introduction

Dr. Jacob (Jake) Wilson is the incoming assistant professor of geology focused in paleontology and curator of the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History. He is previously an NSF EAR postdoctoral fellow at DMNS specializing in the study of freshwater fish around the extinction of the dinosaurs, or the K/Pg mass extinction. His work involves the study of the most recent mass extinction, how it affected freshwater fish, the pace of recovery from the extinction, and how those patterns can inform evolution of lineages through time across the tree of Life, including during the current biodiversity crisis. His current projects include studying fossil fishes from near-K/Pg rocks in the Denver and Williston Basins and building a timeline of K/Pg recovery in the Denver Basin. His research includes fieldwork in the western United States, Bolivia, and Peru studying rocks and fossils from the lead-up to and recovery from the K/Pg event. Jake attended the Colorado School of Mines for his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry before continuing his education with a MS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Denver and a PhD in Functional Anatomy and Evolution from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.