Edward Spagnuolo, PhD Student
Eddie Spagnuolo
PhD Student. Paleobotanist.
I am a Ph.D. student and paleobotanist at Penn State University working with Dr. Peter Wilf in the Department of Geosciences. I love paleontology and using the fossil record to travel back in time to understand the world today. My research is centered around understanding the evolution of Southeast Asian rainforests through tectonic collisions and biotic interchanges using traditional paleobotanical tools such as plant morphology and systematics coupled with new interdisciplinary methods, such as artificial intelligence.
Research Interests
Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal, Costa Rica, 2019
I have been engaged in paleobotanical research since 2019 working in the PSU Paleobotany Lab and collaborators across the globe. I am particularly interested in using the fossil record as a tool for modern conservation efforts, through both designing holistic conservation strategies for extant plants, and as a rationale for conserving lineages and habitats with known evolutionary histories (e.g., UNESCO World Heritage criterion viii).
My research is centered around the rainforests of Southeast Asia, which face some of the highest extinction pressures in the world due to human-driven deforestation, climate change, invasive species, poaching, and wildfires. Using fossils from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australia, and other regions, I plan to understand the biogeographic routes modern plants traveled to make up the hyper-diverse rainforests of today.
Publications and Recent Presentations
Spagnuolo, E.J. (2022) Decoding family-level features for modern and fossil leaves from computer-vision heat maps. University of Montpellier, France [invited colloquium talk].
Spagnuolo, E. J., Wilf, P., Zonneveld, J.-P., Aswan, Bloch, J. I., Ciochon, R. L., Rizal, Y., & Zaim, Y. (2022) Giant seeds of an extant Australasian legume lineage discovered in Eocene Borneo (South Kalimantan, Indonesia). Geological Society of America GeoConnects 2022, Denver, Colorado.