Adjunct Associate Professor
of Geological Sciences
Ph.D.,1988 Anatomy
Harvard Univeristy, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Cambridge, MA
AB.,1982
Dartmouth College, Department of Earth Sciences
cum laude, with highest honors in the major
Hanover, New Hampshire
 Paleontological
Research Institution |
TEACHING |
RECENT PUBLICATIONS |
Research Interests
My major research interest is the ecology of the origin and maintenance of biological diversity--why there are the number of species we see where and when we do--and the application of the geological record to the study of these problems. I am particularly interested in the systematics, ecology, and evolution of Cenozoic mollusks, especially the marine snail family Turritellidae, their patterns of origination and extinction over the last 100 million years, and the environmental and ecological contexts of these patterns. I have most recently been working on the paleoceanography and paleoclimate of the Western Atlantic ocean during the last 10-20 million years, and the possible influence of paleoceanographic conditions on the evolution of mollusks in this region. I am particularly interested in the effects of nutrient changes on origination and extinction patterns in the marine realm and beyond. This work attempts to integrate isotopic, stratigraphic, and paleontological data into a comprehensive picture of paleoenvironment and to use these multiple data sources to test hypotheses of environmental causes for evolutionary events.
This work is strongly supported by the extraordinary resources in the collections of the PRI, which houses among its two million specimens one of the world's finest collections of Cenozoic mollusks.
Biographical Summary
After receiving his doctoral degree, Allmon served for four years as assistant professor of geology at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He came to Ithaca in 1992 as director of the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), renewing its historic connections with Cornell.
Graduate Field Memberships:
updated: 1/13/00
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