Jonathan Hoffman has joined the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History’s Vertebrate Department as the new Dibblee Collection Manager of Earth Science.

Hoffman will curate and build the museum’s geology and paleontology collections at its Mission Creek campus.

Hoffman grew up in Phoenix, and completed his Ph.D. in geology at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. He earned his BA in geology at Occidental College and a master in geology at the University of Florida.

Hoffman's research has focused on the use of fossil teeth as paleoecological tools. His work has also involved looking at modern analogues.

Hoffman has conducted experimental feeding trials with sheep, and studied bison and deer in Utah, Kansas, and on Catalina Island, and done fieldwork throughout the U.S.

This position is made possible by the museum’s Endowment for Earth Sciences, which was created in 2005 from a bequest by Thomas Wilson Dibblee.

A great-great-grandson of the first comandante of the Presidio of Santa Barbara Jose de la Guerra, Dibblee studied geology at Stanford University.

Dibblee walked nearly every square inch of Southern California, personally mapping nearly one-fourth of the state.

In 2001, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History partnered with Dibblee to publish and preserve his extraordinary geological maps, as well as designating his estate to establish a chair of geology at the museum.

Founded in 1916, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History has 10 indoor exhibit halls focusing on regional natural history including astronomy, birds, insects, geology, mammals, marine life, paleontology, and the Chumash Indians.

The museum also houses the only full-dome planetarium on the Central Coast.

Hoffman can be reached at 682-4711 x157 or [email protected]

— Rochelle Rose for Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.