Penobscot Times shares release about Gill’s fern research
The Penobscot Times published portions of a University of Maine media release about Jacquelyn Gill’s fern research. The University of Maine paleoecologist was awarded $343,380 by NASA’s Exobiology program to examine the resilience of ferns, which have existed for about 350 million years, and survived nuclear winter-like conditions 66 million years ago that wiped out dinosaurs and 75% of other animals and plants on Earth. The information she and colleagues uncover could be valuable to understand how to live in changing and challenging climate conditions on Earth, as well as how to recover from a mass extinction, and live on planets that are currently uninhabitable.