| Abstract: |
In the past decade, our understanding of the galaxy population in the last 12 billion years of cosmic history (i.e., since z=4) has improved significantly, thanks to the increasing ability to construct representative snapshots (in time) from z=4 (when the universe was ~1.5 billion years old) to the local universe. I will summarize our current knowledge of the evolution of (massive) galaxies since z=4, with an emphasis on the results from the NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey, and the most recent results from the UltraVISTA survey. I will conclude by presenting the evolution since z=3 of the progenitors of the most massive (stellar mass~5x10^11 Msun) galaxies in the local universe as derived from the UltraVISTA survey, with new results challenging previously proposed pictures for the formation and evolution of local ultra-massive quiescent galaxies. |
