The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is pleased to share that Dr. Sandra J. Carlson, Professor Emerita of Paleontology at UC Davis, has been named the 2026 recipient of the American Geosciences Institute's (AGI) William B. Heroy Jr. Award for Distinguished Service. The Heroy Award...READ MORE
Professor Tessa Hill has been named associate dean of research and graduate education in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. In the position, Hill will facilitate and support cross-departmental and cross-college research initiatives, oversee contracts and grants, and develop...READ MORE
The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is proud to celebrate Ph.D. student Claris Sunjo, who has been awarded the highly competitive 2026–2027 Faculty for the Future Fellowship from the Schlumberger Foundation. This distinguished international award provides $50,000 in support of her...READ MORE
Paleobiologist Geerat Vermeij is enthralled with mollusks. Their shells line the surfaces and fill the cabinets and drawers in his office on the second floor of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Building at UC Davis. But Vermeij’s deep study of these organisms isn’t...READ MORE
In December 2025, Russian scientists published an analysis of a 67-million-year-old dinosaur fossil that was found in the Gobi Desert in 1979. The fossil specimen belonged to a small, two-legged dinosaur named Manipulonyx reshetovi, a part of the Alvarezsauridae family...READ MORE
Geology provides a language for understanding the Earth. Stories from the planet’s past are locked in the rocks and landscape. But others are hard to reveal, hidden in troves of data. No one knows this better than UC Davis Ph.D. alums and married...READ MORE
Professor Tessa Hill has been selected to join the 2026 cohort of the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Local Science Partners Program, a national initiative that strengthens the role of science in public decision-making. Chosen from a highly competitive applicant pool...READ MORE
Anchored in Cameroon’s Wouri Estuary, where rivers, tides, and ships converge, Claris Sunjo leans over the side of her boat. She’s twenty-four hours into collecting water from a tidal creek, a narrow channel connected to the Wouri Estuary system, asking a question scientists...READ MORE
When oceanographer Tessa Hill was asked to join the Climate Crisis Advisory Group (CCAG) as an advisor, she was surprised by the reason. The global group, formed in 2021 with the vision of acting as a bridge between the latest climate science and policymakers, was interested...READ MORE
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has announced the creation of the Louise H. Kellogg Mid-Career Medal, an award recognizing scientists whose interdisciplinary work advances our understanding of how planets evolve. The Union Medal honors the legacy of Louise...READ MORE
For more than half a century, from a remote monitoring station atop Hawaii’s dormant volcano Mauna Kea, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has continuously logged levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In June 2024, researchers carrying out...READ MORE
The temperatures have dipped, the skies are increasingly gray, and the foliage is shifting colors and falling. While the summer months are behind us, one garden on campus remains unchanged: The California Rock Garden. Surrounding the Earth and Physical Sciences Building, the...READ MORE
Roughly 34 million years ago, the Earth started transitioning from a greenhouse to an icehouse state — defined by long-term cooling trends that resulted in ice sheets in the planet’s polar regions. During this time, continental carbon reservoirs expanded as carbon dioxide decreased...READ MORE
Earthquake faults deep in the Earth can glue themselves back together following a seismic event, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Davis. The work, published Nov. 19 in Science Advances and supported by grants from the National Science...READ MORE
Around 252 million years ago, the Earth experienced its largest mass extinction. Known as the “Great Dying,” this cataclysmic event wiped out more than 81% of marine species and 70% of life on land. Currently, the prevailing theory is that the extinction both in the oceans and on...READ MORE
