Regan E. Dunn

Dr. Regan Dunn is Assistant Deputy Director & Associate Curator of the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research La Brea Tar Pits and Adjunct Professor of Earth Sciences at University of Southern California. She is a paleobotanist whose research seeks to understand the interplay between climate, plants and animal evolution through time. She studies phytoliths, pollen, leaf fossils and wood to reconstruct ancient vegetation structure and composition. She has a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Washington, a M.S. in Botany from the University of Wyoming, and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Colorado State University.

She has extensive field experience in the Western U.S. (Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, Oregon), and in Central and South America. She also has worked for the National Park Service as a Geologist and in museums including the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Thomas Condon Paleontology Center in Kimberly, Oregon, the Burke Museum of Nature and Culture in Seattle, WA, and the Field Museum in Chicago, IL.

Her work at La Brea Tar Pits focuses on understanding vegetation and vegetation change over the last 50,000 years in the Los Angeles Basin.