Pollen analysis offers an approach to understanding the Southwestern environment, its history, and in some respects its possible future. Dr. Paul S. Martin's study is an example of geochronology functioning as a strong interdisciplinary link among archaeologists, biogeographers, geologists, paleoclimatologists and ecologists.

Paul S. Martin's work in pollen analysis has helped to refine a powerful scientific tool for investigation of the ancient past. A cross-disciplinary scholar, Martin received his B.A. and M.S. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Michigan. Pursuing studies in paleoecology he held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and the University of Montreal before joining the Geochronology faculty in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Arizona. A Guggenheim Fellowship (1965–1967) enabled him to carry on paleoenvironmental studies in Africa and Madagascar. He is editor with H. E. Wright Jr., of Pleistocene Extinctions: The Search for a Cause (Yale, 1968) and author of more than 50 articles in scholarly journals on pollen analysis, biogeography, and Pleistocene paleoecology.