J Bret BenningtonDr. J Bret Bennington grew up on Long Island and studied geology as an under-graduate at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. He earned his doctorate in Paleontology from the Department of Geological Sciences at Virginia Tech in 1995 and as been on the faculty of the Department of Geology at Hofstra University since 1993. Dr. Bennington's research is focused on quantifying stability and change in marine benthic paleocommunities in the fossil record and on integrating paleontological and sedimentological data to understand the development of depositional sequences in both Carboniferous and Cretaceous marine environments. The results of these studies have been published in journals such as Palaeogeography-Palaeoclimatology-Palaeoecology, Paleobiology, and PALAIOS, and have been presented at a variety of regional, national, and international meetings. Recently, Dr. Bennington has been working with an international group of researchers hosted by the Smithsonian Institution in an effort to combine the work of paleoecologists and ecologists to better understand and predict the impacts of climate change on modern ecosystems. In addition to leading undergraduate students on regional field trips to support his courses in physical geology, historical geology, paleontology, and geomorphology, Dr. Bennington conducts field workshops on the regional geology of New York and New Jersey for high school teachers and is a frequent public lecturer on topics of paleontology, evolution, and regional geology. He is also the co-director of Hofstra University's study abroad program in the Evolutionary Ecology and Geology of the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador, as well as an occasional Charles Darwin impersonator. Read More Read Less