David Taylor
Department of Biology
Expert Bio
David Taylor is a professor of biology and curator of the herbarium at IU Southeast. Research in his laboratory has students involved in preparing plant specimens for biogeochemical analysis to test the hypothesis that the geological biomarker oleanane has a flowering plant origin.
Students collect and prepare all materials, including GPS on localities. After the preliminary analyses, they use the results to produce abstracts and presentations for the IU Southeast student conference and a symposium at North American Paleontological Convention. They are finishing the analyses and will be writing a manuscript with undergraduate students co-author(s).
He has a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut and did post-doc at Yale University.
Areas of Expertise
Plants, botany, fossil plants, flowering plants, flora, herbarium, history of flowering plants, pollination biology, first flowers; climate change: what Southern Indiana plants tell us; flowers and pollinators; fossil flowering plants; land plant biomarkers, and dating oils; the history of plants.