Former Canaan resident trades the woods of the Northwest Corner for the grasslands of East Africa.

Former Canaan resident trades the woods of the Northwest Corner for the grasslands of East Africa.

Daniel Peppe leads teams of researchers engaging in paleobotany to determine what the grasslands of Africa looked like millions of years ago.

Photo provided

Dr. Daniel Peppe, a North Canaan Elementary School and Hotchkiss alum, is a professor of Geosciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

When he is not teaching both intro and graduate level courses, he can be found conducting research across the globe. In short, his work focuses on the evolutionary processes of plants and animals in response to climate change. Having conducted fieldwork in the U.S. Midwest, Australia and Abu Dhabi, Peppe has settled for Eastern Africa.

While in graduate school at Yale University, Peppe lived in the forests of Uganda with his wife, who at the time was researching chimpanzee behavior. It was there that he was put in contact with a geologist in Kenya who was looking for an extra set of hands at a fossil site.

Over the past 20 years, he has continued his work in East Africa, collaborating with both local and international geologists. Each trip lasts about a month and involves moving from site to site.

“The work I do is like building a puzzle, I have all these pieces that need to be put together,” Peppe said.

To build the puzzle of what the landscape looked like in Africa 15-20 million years ago, his team uses paleobotany and ecological methods. The “pieces of the puzzle” range from climate patterns to plant and animal communities. Once put together they provide the team with a reconstructed version of the ancient ecosystem. From there, Peppe can estimate how the ecosystem impacted the natural life that once inhabited it.

A recent focus of Peppe’s work has been on C4 plants, which refer to warm-season grasses.

With his team, he set out to answer the question “when did C4 plants evolve in Kenya and why?”

Unbeknownst to him, the data he would later find would completely shift the timeline of African geology. Peppe’s team found that these plants, which are imperative to interpreting the evolution of mammals, including humans, could be dated back 10 million years earlier than previously documented.

This finding then led to their second breakthrough. It was previously claimed that traits and characteristics of apes had developed through their reliance on dense forest as habitat.

However, coupled with the earlier dating of warm-season grasses, Peppe’s team was able to connect apes’ evolution to both types of vegetation.

Peppe’s passion for nature started long before his academic career. Growing up in the Northwest Corner “really had an impact,” he reflected. As a kid he worked his way from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout. His Eagle Scout project was making trail signs for the North Canaan Greenway.

Despite far flung adventures, Peppe still reveres the Northwest Corner. “I think a lot of people overthink where we live,” Peppe said. “It is full of interesting geology.”

When at Yale, his class went on a field trip to the Falls Village Falls, a place that he associated with childhood memories, not coursework, like fishing in the Blackberry River and hiking Mt. Riga.

“I love what I do,” Peppe said. “I get to be outdoors, working with people, discovering new things.”

Latest News

Kent girls score late win against Millbrook
Pip Davies controls the puck for Kent School.
Photo by Lans Christensen

KENT Kent School's girls hockey team defeated Millbrook School 4-3 in a Valentine's Day showdown on the ice Saturday, Feb. 14.

There was no love lost between these Founders League schools situated on opposite sides of the Connecticut/New York border. Both teams had similar win-loss records, and both were eager to add to the "win" column.

Keep ReadingShow less
Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens:
A shared 
life in art 
and love

Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens at home in front of one of Plagens’s paintings.

Natalia Zukerman
He taught me jazz, I taught him Mozart.
Laurie Fendrich

For more than four decades, artists Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens have built a life together sustained by a shared devotion to painting, writing, teaching, looking, and endless talking about art, about culture, about the world. Their story began in a critique room.

“I came to the Art Institute of Chicago as a visiting instructor doing critiques when Laurie was an MFA candidate,” Plagens recalled.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

Strategic partnership unites design, architecture and construction

Hyalite Builders is leading the structural rehabilitation of The Stissing Center in Pine Plains.

Provided

For homeowners overwhelmed by juggling designers, architects and contractors, a new Salisbury-based collaboration is offering a one-team approach from concept to construction. Casa Marcelo Interior Design Studio, based in Salisbury, has joined forces with Charles Matz Architect, led by Charles Matz, AIA RIBA, and Hyalite Builders, led by Matt Soleau. The alliance introduces an integrated design-build model that aims to streamline the sometimes-fragmented process of home renovation and new construction.

“The whole thing is based on integrated services,” said Marcelo, founder of Casa Marcelo. “Normally when clients come to us, they are coming to us for design. But there’s also some architecture and construction that needs to happen eventually. So, I thought, why don’t we just partner with people that we know we can work well with together?”

Keep ReadingShow less
‘The Dark’ turns midwinter into a weeklong arts celebration

Autumn Knight will perform as part of PS21’s “The Dark.”

Provided

This February, PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance in Chatham, New York, will transform the depths of midwinter into a radiant week of cutting-edge art, music, dance, theater and performance with its inaugural winter festival, The Dark. Running Feb. 16–22, the ambitious festival features more than 60 international artists and over 80 performances, making it one of the most expansive cultural events in the region.

Curated to explore winter as a season of extremes — community and solitude, fire and ice, darkness and light — The Dark will take place not only at PS21’s sprawling campus in Chatham, but in theaters, restaurants, libraries, saunas and outdoor spaces across Columbia County. Attendees can warm up between performances with complimentary sauna sessions, glide across a seasonal ice-skating rink or gather around nightly bonfires, making the festival as much a social winter experience as an artistic one.

Keep ReadingShow less
Tanglewood Learning Institute expands year-round programming

Exterior of the Linde Center for Music and Learning.

Mike Meija, courtesy of the BSO

The Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI), based at Tanglewood, the legendary summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is celebrating an expanded season of adventurous music and arts education programming, featuring star performers across genres, BSO musicians, and local collaborators.

Launched in the summer of 2019 in conjunction with the opening of the Linde Center for Music and Learning on the Tanglewood campus, TLI now fulfills its founding mission to welcome audiences year-round. The season includes a new jazz series, solo and chamber recitals, a film series, family programs, open rehearsals and master classes led by world-renowned musicians.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.