Earth and Environmental Sciences (SEES)

Profile

As a child I was always fascinated by prehistoric life and prehistory in general. Growing up I found the topic increasingly exciting and diverse, it was television programs such the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs that cemented my love of palaeontology and made me decide on a lifelong career as a palaeontologist. 

Professional record:

• 2:1 Palaeobiology and Evolution Bsc (Hons)
• ‘Dragons of the air’ Royal society summer science festival (Two weeks as logistical and teaching staff).

Research interests:

My main areas of interest within palaeontology are the Thyreophora (armoured ornithischian dinosaurs), Fish throughout geological time and palaeoecology.

Research:

The palaeontology and sedimentology of the Downton bone bed.

As a component of my current research I am documenting describing a new section from the late Silurian (Ludlow age) of the Welsh borderlands. The locality I am focusing my research on contains a previously undocumented bone bed. Previous studies of analogous bone beds have yielded fossil remains of early jawed vertebrates in addition to early plants and first land animals (Arthropoda).

The Lau Event is a minor extinction event that is documented from the Ludlow. This “new” bone bed may have the potential to provide important information about the history of life at this time in the context of this is relatively understudied extinction event. Consequently, research will include a documentation and description of all the macro- and micro- fauna and flora found in the section and to understand the sedimentology to allowed interpretation of the palaeoenvironmental and palaeoecological of the locality during the late Silurian.

I am undertaking this research as part of IGCP 591 which is an international research group looking at the early to middle Paleozoic revolution.