Listen to Palaeoparty!
Palaeoparty! podcast episodes are available here:
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Season 1
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"Hey! I'm Hannah Byrne and I am a palaeontology PhD student at Uppsala University, Sweden. I am currently working on Devonian - Carboniferous fossils from East Greenland (including fossil poo!), and I also dabble in deep-time tides, tetrapod footprints and Late Triassic material from Southern Sweden"
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"Hi, I’m Cecily, and I’m a PhD student at University College London. My work involves looking at the evolution of notosuchians, a group of strange terrestrial crocs that lived predominantly in the Cretaceous of South America (although they spread quite a bit further than that!). Once I’ve worked out how they’re all related to each other, I’ll be investigating the biogeographic history of the group, and seeing how geographic and climatic barriers got in the way of their dispersal."
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"Hi, I'm Tom, a post-doc at Ghent University, Belgium. In my research I focus on understanding global climates about half a billion years ago, when early animal-rich ecosystems were evolving. I try to combine geological and fossil data with climate models to build up a picture of the Earth system at this time."
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"I am Richard, a post doc at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Paris. I work on the early evolution of the cartilaginous fishes: the group that today includes sharks, rays, and chimaeras. In particular I’m interested in the earliest evolution of this group in the late Palaeozoic (~420-251 Ma), before the emergence of recognisably modern forms. I use tomographic methods, like CT and synchrotron scanning, to image the fossils of cartilaginous fishes from this period and create 3D models of their anatomy. By combining this data with information from other fossil fishes and their living relatives I try to understand major events in the early evolution of cartilaginous fishes, and the broader implications for jawed vertebrate evolution."
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"Hi, I’m Alessandro, and I’m a postdoctoral research associate at University College London. I study dinosaur palaeobiology, macroecology, and extinction. To investigate these topics, I use phylogenetic, biogeographic, statistical, and Earth System Modelling tools.”
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"Hello there, I’m Orla. I am a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. My research involves understanding taphonomic bias and exceptional preservation.
In particular, I am really interested in transport induced biases and how these factors might affect the overall fidelity of fossil preservation. I work on early Lagerstӓtten (sites with rare and unique preservation of fossilised soft-tissues) from the Palaeozoic. I employ a combination of field, experimental and quantitative approaches to tackle palaeo-biological and palaeo-environmental questions. I also like to dabble in ichnology, the study of traces left behind by organisms." |
Season 2
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Hi, I'm Ross and I'm a palaeontologist with a PhD in Zoology from the University of Oxford. I specialise in seeking, analysing and interpreting ancient DNA, but my area of expertise is the genetics and phylogeny of cats, especially extinct sabretooths.
My research has led to many remarkable findings in recent years and has involved investigating escaped lynx in Edwardian Devon, rubbishing claims that the yeti is an ice-age polar bear and seeking the ancestral home of the enigmatic Orkney vole. In 2018, I received the Palaeontological Association's Gertrude Elles Award for Public Engagement. I currently live in the Highlands of Scotland with my wife and two daughters" |
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"Hi, I’m Katie, I’m the Curator of Benthic Molluscs at the Natural History Museum in London. My work is split between caring for our collections and making them available to researchers, and my own research on mollusc taxonomy and morphological disparity - I mostly focus on bivalves but I’ve been known to dabble in snails. I have a particular penchant for small or relict groups, because I’m interested in why some lineages diversify and ‘disparify’, and others persist for just as long in similar environments by keeping on keeping on, neither becoming particularly speciose or particularly morphologically variable. I mostly do this using 2D and 3D morphometrics, coupled with good old-fashioned descriptive work."
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"I'm Franz, an illustrator based in Indonesia. I like to illustrate things that photographs can't capture like rare animals from obscure places and of course, the distant past. My primary interests are marine creatures and invertebrates, especially fossil marine invertebrates."
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“Hi there! I am Alex, a vertebrate palaeontologist, recently turned public outreach manager, based in Vienna, Austria. I am specializing in the taxonomy and palaeoecology of mammalian megaherbivores. My taxonomic research focuses on late Miocene Giraffidae while I am also working on the dietary evolution of large mammals (e.g. Giraffidae, Proboscidea etc.). I am also an advocate for representation and visibility of LGBTQIA+ folk in Vertebrate palaeontology.”
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Yara Haridy is a PhD student (although not for much longer) at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin Germany, she did her masters on teeth at the University of Toronto in Canada, this was before becoming obsessed with osteology. Yara started her career studying to go to medical school before taking one too many right turns and landing herself in paleontology. She is now obsessed with understanding why our skeletons and more specifically our bones work the way they do, and how old fish fossils can help us understand the evolutionary path that got us our wacky skeletons. When not poking old bones, Yara works to decolonize paleontology through her projects in the middle east.
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Nussaïbah Raja
Nussaïbah is a PhD student at the University of Erlangen Nuremberg, Germany. A geographer by training, she also dabbled in conversation science in her home country of Mauritius, before settling into the realm of palaeobiology. Her research focuses on the impact of environmental change on coral reefs, using novel computational approaches. She also investigates scientific colonialism in palaeontology, and how it has shaped fieldwork and research practices we see today. When not researching, Nussaïbah can be found traveling the world, tending to her furry housemates, or engrossed in trashy K-dramas. |
