David Gold specializes in molecular paleontology, an area of study that combines geological, genetic and developmental tools to study the early evolution of animal life. A biologist by training, he’s fascinated by the development of life systems over long time scales.

For decades, Ryosuke Motani, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has teased apart that very question by studying fossils in tandem with leading-edge computational and chemical analysis techniques. His research has led to landmark discoveries, from using eye socket measurements to determine that some dinosaurs were nocturnal to revealing how land animals adapted to the ocean, among a host of other discoveries.

Paleontologists are getting a glimpse at life over a billion years in the past based on chemical traces in ancient rocks and the genetics of living animals. Research published in Nature Communications combines geology and genetics, showing how changes in the early Earth prompted a shift in how animals eat.

Working in the lab of Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Ryosuke Motani, doctoral candidate Benjamin Faulkner is exploring how plant-eating developed in diapsids, a lineage that includes dinosaurs and modern day lizards, snakes, turtles, birds and crocodilians.