Rate My Professor Claire Browning

Dr Claire Browning is an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Cape Town. She holds a PhD from the University of Cape Town awarded in 2024, as well as an MSc, BSc, and BSc (Hons) from Nelson Mandela University awarded in 2009. Her research explores the interplay between palaeontology and sedimentology to reconstruct past environments and the dynamics that shaped them, with a focus on the South African geological record across major mass extinction events including the end-Ordovician in the Cape Supergroup and the end-Permian in the Karoo Supergroup. She investigates how life adapts during and recovers after ice ages and periods of profound environmental stress and evolutionary innovation. Active projects include a multiproxy approach to refining the Ordovician-Silurian boundary in South Africa through biostratigraphy, detrital zircon geochronology, palaeomagnetism, sedimentology, and sequence stratigraphy, as well as U-Pb geochronology of carbonate nodules for dating sedimentary rocks in the Karoo basin and the use of marine snow and dust as palaeoenvironmental indicators in Late- and Early-Palaeozoic ice ages in South Africa. Her professional experience includes serving as Curator of Geology and Invertebrate Palaeontology in the Research and Exhibitions Department at Iziko South African Museum since 2025, following her role as Karoo Palaeontology Curator there from 2017 to 2025. Prior to that, she worked as a Geologist at the Council for Geoscience from 2009 to 2017 and as a contract lecturer in the Geology Department at Nelson Mandela University in 2009. Selected publications include Browning C. 2025. Museums in the age of extinction. Nature Ecology and Evolution; Penn-Clarke C.R., Browning C., and D.A.T. Harper 2023. Ordovician of South Africa. A Global Synthesis of the Ordovician System, Geological Society of London; Penn-Clarke C.R., Deacon J., Wiltshire N., Browning C. and du Plessis R. 2020. Short report: Geoheritage in the Matjiesrivier Nature Reserve, a World Heritage Site in the Cederberg, South Africa. Journal of African Earth Sciences; and Gabbott S.E., Browning C., Theron J.N. and Whittle R.J. 2017. The late Ordovician Soom Shale Lagerstätte: an extraordinary post-glacial fossil and sedimentary record. Journal of the Geological Society. She has contributed to science communication through publications, documentary appearances, and training in science communication.