Virtual Seminar Wednesday February 8, 2023 – Conférence virtuelle mercredi le 8 février 2023
12:00 – 13:00 (Eastern Time)
Gregory Funston, PhD (Royal Ontario Museum)
Do the meek inherit the Earth? Mesozoic mammal life history as a guide for conservation biology
“ L’histoire de vie des mammifères mésozoïques comme guide pour la biologie de la conservation”
Summary: When mammals took over after the dinosaurs, it was not the dominant Cretaceous groups that led the charge. But why did eutherians (our ancestors) survive and thrive after the extinction, whereas others did not? A specialized pace of life—what biologists call life history—suggests that it may have played a key role as an extinction filter. However, virtually nothing is known about life history in Mesozoic mammals—most are represented only by teeth. Now, my research shows that fossil mammal teeth can be used to reconstruct life history in unprecedented detail by combining palaeohistology and geochemistry, revealing daily growth lines and dietary elements locked in fossilized enamel. At the Royal Ontario Museum, I am using these approaches to evaluate the role of life history as a filter in the end-Cretaceous extinction, building towards an ultimate goal of using lessons from deep time to guide modern conservation biology.
This seminar is open to public.
Please register HERE to receive a link to the Zoom event.
You are welcome to share the flyer with family, friends or colleagues at other institutions and post the registration link on your social media.
Cette conférence est ouverte au public.
Veuillez vous inscrire ici pour recevoir un lien vers l’événement Zoom.
Vous êtes invités à partager le dépliant avec votre famille, vos amis ou vos collègues d’autres institutions et à publier le lien d’inscription sur vos médias sociaux.
About the speaker:
Dr. Greg Funston is a Canadian palaeontologist working as a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Royal Ontario Museum. His research interests lie in the way that animals grew and how ecosystems evolved over millions of years. Following his lifelong dream to be a palaeontologist, he completed his PhD at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, focusing on the anatomy and evolution of toothless dinosaurs. This took him across the world, from the badlands of Alberta, to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. After a Newton International Fellowship in Scotland, he has also developed an interest in fossil mammals, and how their teeth can be used to understand their life histories and evolution.