The group recently attended the 67th Palaeontological Association Annual Meeting in Cambridge where team members Amy Shipley and Meghan Jenkinson presented their research. Amy presented a talk on Ecosystem structural changes following a marine megafaunal extinction, showing that Pleistocene marine communities in the North Atlantic displayed slight differences, in the form of less vertical complexity … More #PalAss23

Annabel Nicholls has joined the Palaeo@Leeds group as a NERC funded Research Assistant. Annabel will be working on the recently funded Exploring the Frontiers project entitled “Ecosystem recovery following the Permo-Triassic mass extinction“. Annabel’s project will explore a novel approach to mass extinction palaeobiology research via interdisciplinary methods combining recent advances in ecological modelling with … More Welcome Annabel Nicholls!

Ellie Defty has joined the Palaeo@Leeds group as a Palaeontological Association (PalAss) Undergraduate Bursary summer intern. Ellie’s project is entitled “Lilliput sharks and marine apex predators of the Permo-Triassic” and she will be investigating body size patterns in chondrichthyans across the Permo-Triassic mass extinction and recovery interval. Ellie’s project will involve applying a variety of … More Welcome Ellie Defty!

The EGU General Assembly 2023 took place, as usually, in Vienna (Austria) 23-28 April 2023. 2 members of the lab presented their research on ecosystem structure and mass extinction events… Alex Dunhill gave a keynote talk in the Climatic, tectonic, and biodiversity changes through hyperthermal intervals in Earth history (CL1.1.2) session entitled Extinction cascades, community … More EGU 2023

New paper by Dr William Foster and colleagues, published in Royal Society Open Science, shows that evidence from  past extinctions cannot be used as a definitive way of predicting the nature of other past extinction events or future biodiversity loss. A team of researchers led by Dr William Foster from Hamburg University used fossils from … More Can we predict mass extinction selectivity?

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been awarded 2x UKRI NERC research grants in the past 2 months… ———————————————– First, a 3 year NERC/NSF Pushing the Frontiers grant, Community and Structural Collapse During Mass Extinctions (CASCaDE), worth ~£1 million. This grant is awarded in collaboration with a team of palaeobiologists and ecologists at the University … More 2x UKRI grants funded & upcoming employment opportunities

There have been 2 new mass extinction papers from the lab published in last couple of months… Atkinson et al. (2022) Firstly, a palaeoecological study of the long benthic recovery from the Toarcian (Early Jurassic) mass extinction event in the Cleveland Basin in North Yorkshire (UK) published in Journal of the Geological Society of London. … More 2x new mass extinction papers

Come and join the lab at Palaeo@Leeds and do a fully-funded NERC Panorama DTP PhD with me on the ecological recovery from the Permian-Triassic mass extinction! ——————————————————————————————————————————————————– More info here: https://panorama-dtp.ac.uk/research/the-rise-and-fall-of-disaster-taxa-ecosystem-recovery-following-the-permo-triassic-mass-extinction/ How to apply: https://panorama-dtp.ac.uk/how-to-apply/ ——————————————————————————————————————————————————– Project Summary The Permo-Triassic mass extinction (PTME; c. 252 Ma) was the most catastrophic biotic event of the Phanerozoic … More Fully funded PhD opportunity for Oct’23 start

The start of a new academic year sees an influx of new researchers to the lab. Welcome Meghan Jenkinson! Meghan is a palaeontologist, based in Earth and Environment, who will be working with Dr Cris Little, myself and colleagues from The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Society, University of Exeter and the British Geological Survey … More Welcome, new lab members!

New paper out in Global and Planetary Change on the rate and magnitude of CAMP volcanism across the TJ extinction event and how it compares with modern anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Anthropogenic-scale CO2 degassing from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province as a driver of the end-Triassic mass extinction by Manfredo Capriolo, Benjamin J.W.Mills, Robert J.Newton, JacopoDal Corso, … More New paper on TJ extinction volcanism