[3] She completed doctoral studies at Ohio State University in 1969, with a dissertation titled "Stratigraphy of Uppermost Silurian and Lowermost Devonian Rocks and the Conodont Fauna of the Coeymans Formation and its Correlatives in Northeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Southeasternmost New York" (1970).
[4] Harris worked for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) as a mapmaker and map editor,[5] and later as a research scientist.
[6] She invented the Conodont Alteration Index, a means of determining heat exposure in buried rock, with applications in the oil industry.
They have a different vocabulary, a different alphabet, but you learn how to read them," she explained to John McPhee, for his book In Suspect Terrain (1983).
She received a Meritorious Service Award from the U.S. Department of the Interior, and was the first woman to win the Pander Society Medal.