PaleoFest Speakers Keynote Speaker: Sanaa El-Sayed, PhD Candidate, Mansoura University, Egypt

Talk title: Bone Histology and Growth of Chasmosaurine Ceratopsid Dinosaurs from the Late Campanian Kaiparowits Formation, Southern Utah   Carrie Levitt-Bussian is a paleontologist and the Paleontology Collections Manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah.  She manages over 50,000 paleontological specimens at NHMU which includes vertebrate, invertebrate and paleobotanical fossils.  She received her Masters of Science […]

Talk title: Hell chick to hell chicken – using bone microstructure to uncover the life and times of North American oviraptorosaurs   Jade is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto studying the growth, diversity, and ecology of theropod dinosaurs and their avian descendants. She uses osteohistology (the study of bone microstructure) to learn […]

Talk title:  New Evidence for Canopy Collapse at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary from Leaf Cuticles   Regan is a paleoecologist whose research seeks to understand the interplay between climate, plants and animal evolution through time. She is currently a Research Associate at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL and will soon be joining […]

Talk title: From fruit flies to sea scorpions: Eurypterids as model organisms for evolutionary research Dr. James Lamsdell is an Assistant Professor of Paleobiology in the Department of Geology and Geography at West Virginia University. Dr. His research focuses on macroevolution and paleoecology through the lens of paleontology and paleobiology, particularly in aquatic arthropods such […]

Talk title: The Hidden Lives of Lost Hunters – Growth in Creodonts and Early Carnivores   Ashley is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. He is interested in links between major events in evolution and animal life history. He investigates fossil vertebrates at major transitions like those to flight or the return […]

Talk title: New vertebrate discoveries from the Late Triassic Popo Agie Formation (upper Chugwater Group) of Wyoming; amphibians, phytosaurs, and dinosaurs oh my!   Dr. Dave Lovelace is a vertebrate paleontologist specializing in Triassic-aged rocks of the Rocky Mountain West (252-201 million years ago). He joined the UW Geology Museum team as a research scientist […]

Talk title: Preservation of Original Tissues in the Alberta Geological Record. How is it Possible?   Aaron van der Reest is a Master’s student in the Currie Lab at the University of Alberta where his current thesis investigates factors influencing the preservation of original soft tissues in vertebrate fossil remains. This work specifically investigates Late […]

Talk title: Reconstructing locomotion: lessons from the joints of living animals   Armita Manafzadeh is a PhD candidate at Brown University, where she studies the evolution and development of hindlimb joint mobility. By using an imaging technique called X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (XROMM), she visualizes the 3-D movements of bones within the legs of […]

Talk title: A green perspective on the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction event Dr. Antoine Bercovici is a research associate at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) in Washington, DC, and at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He is a palynologist (the study of pollen and spores) and combines his skills with sedimentological […]

Talk title: Giving SUE the T. rex a new home and what their bones can tell us about the evolution of large body size in theropods Dr. Thomas Cullen is a postdoctoral research scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. His research uses data from microfossil bonebed assemblages, morphometrics, bone microstructure, […]

Talk title: Nestled among dinosaurs: New Alphadon specimens from Egg Mountain and their implications for marsupial evolution. Alex is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington in Seattle. She studies the morphology, diversity, and biomechanics of a group of mammals called metatherians. This group includes modern-day marsupials. Her research is focused on those metatherians of the […]

Talk Title: Early Hominin Paleoecology and Implications for Human Evolution Dr. Denise Su is the Director of Partnerships and Programs and Curator of Paleobotany and Paleoecology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural. She is an expert in paleoecological reconstruction. Her research explores environments in which our early ancestors lived in order to provide insight into […]

Talk Title: A Jurassic mom with thirty-eight babies, and the evolution of mammalian reproduction Eva Hoffman studies mammals’ earliest forebears. As a graduate student at Harvard University, she uses 3D imaging and other digital methods in her research on the anatomy and evolutionary relationships of mammal-line amniotes that lived as long ago as the Carboniferous. […]

Talk Title: Dinosaur Integument: Fuzz, Feathers, or Scales? It’s Still Complicated. Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. is Principal Lecturer in Vertebrate Paleontology at the Department of Geology, University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on the origin, evolution, adaptations, and behavior of carnivorous dinosaurs, and especially of tyrannosauroids (Tyrannosaurus rex and its kin). He received his […]

Talk Title: The Fossil Record in the Far Future Dr. Roy Plotnick is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research is notably eclectic, encompassing analytical paleobiology, taphonomy, paleobiomechanics and systematics. These studies cover a wide range of taxonomic groups, including arthropods, crinoids, brachiopods, mammals and anemones. Current research includes the vertebrate […]