Palaeobiology

Meet the team

Dr David Martill

Dave's numerous and varied research interests include the palaeobiology of pterosaurs and dinosaurs, the processes of fossilization and Mesozoic palaeoecology.

He currently has several research students investigating such things as fossil feathers, Jurassic turtles, brachiosaurid sauropods, recently extinct fauna on oceanic islands, Cretaceous theropods and the microvertebrates of the Cretaceous of the Isle of Wight.

He has worked in the field in North Africa, Jordan, Malawi and Chile, but his main field area is in the Araripe Basin of north east Brazil. Undergraduate students frequently join Dave's expeditions, and in the last few years several students have undertaken their 2nd level projects in Brazil.

Currently he is working on aspects of the flight mechanics and construction of pterosaur bone, and the structure of pterosaur headcrests.

Dr David Loydell

David Loydell is an internationally recognised expert on the Silurian System. He is a Titular Member of the IUGS Subcommission on Silurian Stratigraphy and Vice President of the Palaeontological Association.

David has published extensively on fossil graptolites, an enigmatic group of colonial organisms of immense importance in Palaeozoic biostratigraphy and palaeogeography.

David's work takes him around the world, doing research in Wales, China, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and the USA. He is also engaged in projects related to oil field evaluation in North Africa and the Middle East.

Prof Andrew Gale

Andy has wide interests in palaeontology and stratigraphy, including the evolution of the asteroids (starfishes), geological history of wood boring bivalves, and the stratigraphy of Cretaceous rocks, including especially chalk. He is currently publishing a new evolutionary tree of the post-Palaeozoic asteroids, based mostly on detailed morphological studies of living species. Andy is extensively involved in fieldwork, currently on the Triassic of northern Italy and the Jurassic of France, Germany and Morocco.

Bob Loveridge

Mr Bob Loveridge is an experimental officer in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Originally a horticulturalist, Bob now researches into the flora of the Early Cretaceous Crato Formation of north east Brazil.

He has undertaken a number of expeditions to Brazil and North Africa and helps lead student field trips to Germany, Estonia and the Welsh Borders. He has recently discovered important examples of early angiosperms and ferns, and has several papers in the press.

Tony Butcher

As a research assistant in palaeobiology, Tony's field of research is on an extinct group of organic walled microfossils, the Chitinozoa, and their application to Palaeozoic biostratigraphy.

Data is obtained from outcrop or core samples, which are processed using hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid. The acids dissolve the rock matrix, but leave the fragile palynomorphs undamaged.

Chtinozoans data are being combined with the well-established global, graptolite biozonations to provide high-resolution integrated biozonal schemes for Palaeozoic strata worldwide.

Tony was an undergraduate at Portsmouth, and is just about to submit his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Chitinozoan biostratigraphy of the Rhuddanian of Illinois and Jordan", which will be followed by a two-year postdoctoral research project focussing on the chitinozoan biostratigraphy of Libya.