Dr. Gussie Maccracken is the Assistant Curator of Paleobotany, studying fossil plants and their ecological interactions in deep time. She focuses on reconstructing ancient landscapes during the Late Cretaceous (Age of the Dinosaurs), across the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction, and into the first million years of the Paleogene (Age of the Mammals) to understand how ecosystems rebuild after mass extinctions and climate change. Gussie has done fieldwork throughout the Western Interior of North America, including Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Coahuila, Mexico. Prior to becoming Assistant Curator of Paleobotany at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, she was a postdoctoral fellow funded through the National Science Foundation. Gussie received her BA from Colorado College and PhD. from University of Maryland, College Park, where she conducted her research at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History.
