John was born and raised on the boundary between the Blue Ridge and Piedmont provinces in western North Carolina and got his first real taste of fossils in the Valley and Ridge province of southwest Virginia as an undergraduate at Appalachian State University. He then studied as an invertebrate paleontologist at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (M.S.) and Virginia Tech (Ph.D.). Following graduate school, John was a post-doc at Virginia Tech, a lecturer at the University of Kentucky, a Humboldt Research Fellow at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Erlangen (Germany), and a Visiting Assistant Professor at St. Lawrence University before joining the faculty at the University of Missouri.

John's research interests focus on biotic interactions and their evolution across a range of time scales and utilize a variety of quantitative and analytical methods. Though he typically works with shallow marine bivalves, folks in his group work with many taxonomic groups across the Phanerozoic. Please contact us if you are interested in joining or collaborating with our group here at Mizzou Paleo!