Rate My Professor Lidya Tarhan

Lidya Tarhan serves as Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the Earth Sciences faculty at Yale University and as Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum. She received her B.A. magna cum laude with distinction in Geology, concentrating in Paleontology, and English from Amherst College in 2008. Tarhan earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of California, Riverside in 2010 and 2013, respectively, with her doctoral research on exceptional preservation and substrate evolution in early Paleozoic marine shelfal environments advised by Dr. Mary Droser. Prior to her faculty appointment, she held positions as Postdoctoral Associate from 2014 to 2015 and 2018 to 2019, and NSF Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow from 2016 to 2017 in Yale's Department of Geology and Geophysics, now Earth and Planetary Sciences. She joined the Yale faculty as Assistant Professor in 2019 and advanced to Assistant Professor AP2 in 2023.

Tarhan's research centers on the sedimentary record to reconstruct ancient life and environments during pivotal Earth history intervals, investigating animal-environment interplay and ecosystem engineering roles from micro to global scales in past and present settings. Key foci include Ediacara Biota preservation mechanisms, early Paleozoic substrate evolution via bioturbation, and fossilization processes biasing stratigraphic records. Her methods integrate sedimentological and paleontological analyses with geochemical tools, experiments, and modeling, supported by fieldwork. Prominent publications encompass "Tracking bioturbation through time: The evolution of the marine sedimentary mixed and transition layers" (Science Advances, 2025), "Elevated marine dissolved silica levels explain a wide range of Ediacaran–Cambrian Ediacara-style fossil deposits" (Geobiology, 2025), "Bioturbation feedbacks on the phosphorus cycle" (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2021), and the invited review "The early Paleozoic development of bioturbation—evolutionary and geobiological consequences" (Earth-Science Reviews, 2018). Her findings reveal ancient silica-rich oceans enabling exceptional fossil casts, bioturbators reshaping seafloor habitability, oxygenation, and nutrient dynamics, and lags in bioturbation post-evolutionary events. Awards include the Geological Society of America Donath Medal (2021), Sloan Research Fellowship (2023–2025), Arthur Greer Memorial Prize (2024), National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellowship (2025), and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2010–2013). Tarhan teaches EPS 232: Earth Surface Processes and directs the Tarhan Geobiology Lab mentoring Ph.D. students and postdocs.