Professor
Micropaleontology and Biostratigraphy
Office: 301A Davis Hall
Phone: (815) 753-7951
E-mail: reed@niu.edu
BS in Geology; Southampton College (Long Island University)
MS; University of South Carolina
Ph.D; The Ohio State University
Most of my research relates to history of the Antarctic ice sheet and other studies of climate change through time.
I am, in essence, a micropaleontologist, but the arc of my career spans the spectrum from the smallest fossils (diatoms) to the largest fossils (dinosaurs).
Most of my research relates to history of the Antarctic ice sheet and other studies of climate change through time. I use assemblages of fossil diatoms (microscopic siliceous algae) as tools for evaluating these changes. My students and I work with diatoms in sediments recovered by stratigraphic drilling and piston coring along the Antarctic continental margin and the circum-Antarctic ocean, and sediments recovered from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf and grounded West Antarctic Ice Sheet. I also use diatoms as tracers of ice sheet processes, using the physical properties of diatoms to help evaluate sediment mixing and subglacial shearing in tills.
In addition to these projects I work on a variety of applications of diatom fossils as Pleistocene and Holocene paleoenvironmental tracers in both marine and non-marine settings, including projects in the Midwest.
My students drew me into the exciting world of dinosaurs, including research on Jane, Burpee Museum of Natural History's famous juvenile T. rex, and other significant finds from the Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation in southeastern Montana, and a haul of Morrison Formation Jurassic fossils from Utah. I’m also a Board of Trustees member of the Rockford IL museum.
Jeol JSM-5610LV Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope
NIU Biological Sciences Vertebrate Paleontology, Ecology, and Evolution program
West Antarctic Ice Sheet Inititiative
Diatoms and cosmogenic isotopes as tracers of past deglacial events
Sjunneskog, C.M., Scherer, R.P., Aldahan, A. and Possnert, G. 10Be in glacial marine sediment of the Ross Sea, Antarctica, a potential tracer of depositional environment and sediment chronology. NIMB (Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section B. In Press.
Marine diatom biostratigraphy and taxonomy
Olney, M, Scherer, R., Bohaty, S., and Harwood, D. Oligocene-early Miocene Antarctic nearshore diatom biostratigraphy. Deep Sea Research. In Press.
Quantitative approaches to marine and freshwater diatom paleoecology
Warnock, J., Scherer, R., and Loubere, P. A quantitative proxy of diatom dissolution with implications on sediment focussing mechanisms in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. Deep-Sea Research. In Press.
Glacial processes
Scherer, R.P., Sjunneskog, C.M., Iverson, N., and Hooyer, T. 2005. Frustules to fragments, diatoms to dust: how degradation of microfossil micro and nanostructures can teach us how ice sheets work. Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, 5, 96-99.
Radiolarian biostratigraphy, evolution, and taxonomy
Scherer, R.P., 1991. Miocene radiolarians of the Sulu Sea, ODP Leg 124. Proc. ODP, Sci. Res., 124: College Station, TX (Ocean Drilling Program) pp. 359-368.
On a regular basis I teach Introduction to Ocean Science (Geol 104), Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology(Geol 322 - with Paul Loubere), plus upper level and graduate courses in Invertebrate Paleontology, Micropaleontology (with Paul Loubere), Scientific Writing and Presentation, and seminar courses in diatom paleoecology and biostratigraphy. I also direct internships in plaeontology at the Burpee Museum of Natural History.