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is like Indiana Jones 鈥� but for plants.

Gensel is a paleobotanist and an emeritus professor who recently retired from the biology department in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. She studies plants from the Devonian and Lower Carboniferous periods, which date back 327-400 million years 鈥� pre-dating dinosaurs.

鈥淭hese are small, simple plants,鈥� she explains. 鈥淪ome of them lacked roots. Many of them lacked leaves. They mostly had a stem and a reproductive structure called the sporangium.鈥�

Since joining the 色中色biology faculty in 1975, Gensel has drastically improved our understanding of these flora, uncovering new classifications of plants, approximating the number of species that existed and rigorously documenting their evolution. To study them, she鈥檚 collected fossils found in rocks all over the world, from the Canadian arctic to Beijing to Australia, and has published this work in nearly 90 papers and a book.

鈥淧lants give us oxygen, and without them, we wouldn鈥檛 be able to survive,鈥� she says. 鈥淧lus, we all have an interest in knowing where we come from 鈥� and this is where we come from on a big scale.鈥�

Spores and schools

Gensel鈥檚 passion for plants stems from her childhood near Buffalo, New York, where she grew up tromping through her grandfather鈥檚 farm, mesmerized by the different organisms she saw. She spent her last two summers before college participating in summer science programs that included field trips.

About halfway through her undergraduate degree in biology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, she attended a lecture on fossil spores. And when she approached the professor to ask a few questions, he offered her a job in his lab.

鈥淚 think I always had an interest in plants, but this crystallized it,鈥� she says.

Her mentor introduced her to a palynologist 鈥� a person who studies fossil spores and pollen 鈥� who was looking for an assistant to aid him in his research on Devonian spores in London. But after a year, she realized she preferred studying whole plants versus spores. She came back to the U.S. to work on master鈥檚 and doctorate at the University of Connecticut.

Gensel (center) and a team of researchers pose for a photo before unearthing fossils in a Devonian outcrop outside Campbellton in New Brunswick, Canada. (Courtesy of Patricia Gensel)

A pioneering paleobotanist

After graduating from UConn in 1972, Gensel stayed on as a postdoctoral researcher for a few years before landing a faculty position in the botany department at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1975. She and鈥�, who is still at Carolina, were the first two female professors ever hired by the department.

Paleobotany was a way for Gensel to merge multiple interests. It requires foundational knowledge in both botany and geology, but also involves working at excavation sites, unearthing fossils with the same techniques archaeologists use to uncover artifacts.

鈥淚 was fascinated by how many of these 400-million-year-old plants had features present in living ones,鈥� Gensel shares. 鈥淎t that time, they looked very different, but they still were doing some very similar things and were surprisingly more sophisticated than people thought when I first started out in this field.鈥�

Recently, Gensel and two colleagues found鈥�鈥痜rom the Lower Carb to date. With its tall skinny trunk and almost equally long spindly leaves, it looks like something out of 鈥淭he Lorax.鈥� So, of course, the research team is affectionately called it the 鈥淒r. Seuss tree.鈥�

鈥淭his tree is special because it doesn鈥檛 match any existing models we have of trees from this period,鈥� Gensel explains.

An ending and a beginning

Now that Gensel has retired, she鈥檚 devoting her time to her remaining research projects, of which she has many.

鈥淚 still find it exciting to work with these plant puzzles,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e some of the biggest and hardest puzzles out there.鈥�

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