Ellen Currano
Ellen Currano
Ellen Currano
Paleobotanist & Paleoecologist
Ellen Currano is a paleobotanist and paleoecologist. She studies the responses of ancient forest ecosystems to environmental change.
Ellen grew up in Chicago, Illinois. As a child, she was interested in dinosaurs and saw paleontology as a way to get outdoors and travel to faraway places. She attended college at the University of Chicago and later received her PhD from Pennsylvania State University. Afterwards, she briefly worked at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, before taking a faculty position in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wyoming. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Wyoming.
Ellen uses fossil plants to investigate the responses of ancient forests to environmental disruptions or changes. Specifically, she investigates how environmental changes affected plant diversity, ecosystem structure, plant-insect interactions, and the geographic distribution of plants through time. By telling us how forest ecosystems reacted to past changes, her work may allow us to better predict how modern forest ecosystems will respond to human-caused changes like global warming.
Ellen is also the co-creator of The Bearded Lady Project with her friend Lexi Jamieson Marsh, a filmmaker. The project highlights the voices and experiences of women paleontologists. The idea for the project was hatched when Ellen told Lexi about some of the difficulties she faced being heard as a woman in paleontology. She remarked:
“There are days I wish I could walk into a room with a beard on my face and just do my work.”
— Ellen Currano as quoted by Lexi Jamieson Marsh in an interview for Nature
The Bearded Lady Project has created a series of portraits of women paleontologists wearing beards in order to draw attention to the stereotype of paleontology as a field for intrepid men. The portraits have been incorporated into an exhibit and a book with essays by female paleontologists. There is also a The Bearded Lady Project short film.
Daring to Dig Interview
In this video, Ellen discusses how she became interested in paleontology, the representation of women in paleontology when she was a student, and how she sees that representation changing today and in the future. This interview was recorded when Ellen was an Assistant Professor (an Assistant Professor is a tenure-track professor who is still in her probationary period). She has since been promoted.
Selected technical works by Ellen Currano
Currano, E.D. 2013. Ancient bug bites on ancient plants record forest ecosystem response to environmental perturbations. The Paleontological Society Papers 19: 157–174. Link
Currano, E.D., B.F. Jacobs, A. D. Pan, and N.J. Tabor. 2011. Inferring ecological disturbance in the fossil record: A case study from the late Oligocene of Ethiopia. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 306: 242–252. Link
Currano, E.D., R. Laker, A.G. Flynn, K.K. Fogt, H. Stradtman, and S.L. Wing. 2016. Consequences of elevated temperature and pCO2 on insect folivory at the ecosystem level: perspectives from the fossil record. Ecology and Evolution 6: 4318–4331. Link
Currano, E.D., E.R.S. Pinheiro, R. Buchwaldt, W.C. Clyde, and I.M. Miller. 2019. Endemism in Wyoming plant and insect herbivore communities during the early Eocene hothouse. Paleobiology 45: 421–439. Link
Currano, E.D., B.F. Jacobs, R.T. Bush, A. Novello, M. Feseha, F. Grímsson, F.A. McInerney, L.A. Michel, A.D. Pan, S.R. Phelps, P. Polissar, C.A.E. Strömberg, and N.J. Tabor. 2020. Ecological dynamic equilibrium in an early Miocene (21.73 Ma) forest, Ethiopia. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 539: 109425. Link
Selected essays by Ellen Currano
Currano, E. no date. About Ellen. An unsuitable job for a woman (blog). Link
Currano, E. 2015. Life as a palaeontologist: A thoroughly suitable job for a woman. Palaeontology Online 5: article 3. Link
The Bearded Lady Project
The Bearded Lady Project. Complete short film via Vimeo. Link
The Bearded Lady Project: Challenging the Face of Science. Project website. Link
Marsh, L.J., and E. Currano (eds.). 2020. The Bearded Lady Project: Challenging the face of science. Columbia University Press, New York.
Further reading
Garvey, K.K. 2021. Paleoecologist Ellen Currano: What those ancient bug-bitten leaves reveal. Entomology and Nematology News, 23 April 2021. Link
St. George, Z. 2021. As climate warms, a rearrangement of world’s plant life looms. YaleEnvironment360, 17 June 2021. Link
Time Scavengers: Ellen Currano, paleobotanist & paleoecologist. Interview, posted 31 July 2017. Link
Witze, A. 2016. Q&A: Lexi Jamieson Marsh and Ellen Currano: Face to face. Nature 538: 316. Link
Video & audio content
Ignite Laramie 2016: Ellen Currano. Presentation by Ellen Currano, 28 October 2016, via YouTube. Link
University of Michigan EEB Seminar: Ellen Currano, University of Wyoming. Presentation by Ellen Currano, 8 March 2018. Link
University of Wyoming: “Paleobotany Spotlight: Time travelling with Wyoming’s plant fossils.” Video, 31 October 2017, via YouTube. Link