Jared Cooke is a junior Zoology major. With a particular interest in paleontology, Jared wants to explore the central United States badlands for their late cretaceous marine fossils. In paleontological research, he loves paying the extreme amount of attention to detail required to make inferences and reach new depths.

“Paleontology, broadly speaking, is the study of all life that’s ever lived,” says Jared. Because paleontology is such a large field, Jared says an effective paleontologist must specialize in a certain part of the field; in Jared’s case, this specialization is “in the ecosystems and evolution of marine reptiles of the late Cretaceous seaways of North America,” with a focus on Mosasaurs. To fully understand a field of knowledge, explains Jared, you must understand its context. “I spend a lot of time learning about and discovering a whole array of fauna that existed in the late cretaceous oceans of Texas,” he says. “Texas is an excellent theater into understanding the ancient cretaceous oceans, since it has many rocks that formed during this time in the ocean environment.”