My lab explores (1) how dietary adaptations shaped life over deep time and (2) the effect of prolonged climate extremes on the Amazon rainforest. By tracing the biochemical signatures left by diets in amino acids (and developing new isotopic methods when needed) the Tejada lab aims to uncover the deep evolutionary roots of herbivory. Fossils also help us to assess the Amazon's sensitivity to collapse, an outcome widely considered a tipping point in Earth's climate system. These lines of research bring together lab experiments on modern organisms, new geochemical tools, and fossil discoveries from the Amazon rainforest, one of Earth's scientific frontiers.

 

Bio:

Julia Tejada is Assistant Professor of Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. She earned a BS in Biological Sciences from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Lima, Peru), followed by an MS from the University of Florida, and a PhD from Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History (New York). Before joining Caltech in 2023, she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Montpellier (France), and the University of Cambridge (UK).