I’m Ashley Rivas, a 4th year PhD candidate in the Tarhan Lab at Yale University. I consider myself a geobiologist and paleontologist.

My geoscience career started during my undergraduate at Smith College with Dr. Sara Pruss as my thesis advisor. At Smith, I studied skeletal abundance during the early Ordovician in Laurentian rocks to understand how changes in ecology (i.e. changes in reef framework builders) during the onset of the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) impacted biodiversity in the shallow marine realm.

Since then, I’ve published on enigmatic Ediacaran fossils as a minor project to my major dissertation, advised by Dr. Lidya Tarhan and Dr. Derek Briggs at Yale University, and am currently working on my largest project (>2000 m of decimeter-scale data!) yet on bioturbation patterns through the early Paleozoic for my dissertation.

When I’m not conducting research or writing up papers, I like to spend hours at the pottery wheel, cuddle with my cat, and dance!

Stay tuned for research updates, and in the meantime check out my CV!