Overview

A 350-million-year-old marine 
ecosystem in Scotland 
(Painting by Robert Nicholls)

Vertebrates before and after the end-Devonian extinction (from Sallan and Galimberti, Science, 2015)

348 million year old fish Aetheretmon, showing the ancestral double tail alongside a modern pufferfish with (lower) caudal fin alone.
(Painting by John Megahan)

 

Lauren Sallan, PhD

Martin Meyerson Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies
Earth and Environmental Science
University of 
Pennsylvania
                           TED Fellow

 lsallan@upenn.edu
CV  Google Citations

Speaking at TED 2017

Research Summary
We use 'Big Data' approaches, evolutionary trees and detailed study of fossils to determine how global events, environmental change and ecological interactions shaped long-term change (macroevolution) and established modern biodiversity.

Our analyses use deep-time databases for early vertebrates (half of vertebrate history), ray-finned fishes (half of vertebrate diversity), marine ecosystems and mass extinctions.

Research Interests
Paleobiology/Paleontology
Macroevolution, Macroecology,
Early Vertebrates, Ichthyology 
Mass Extinction, Phylogenetics
Biomechanics, Evo-Devo

Listen to a Palaeocast interview about our research on early vertebrate macroevolution and paleobiology

News

June, 2017: Our research on mass extinction and success in fishes is featured in the new popular science book "The Ends of the World" by Peter Brannen (Harper Collins), summarized in Forbes (by TED Fellow Karim Abouelnaga), and profiled in the Spring/Summer issue of OMNIA, the magazine of Penn Arts and Sciences.

May, 2017: Aja won a Paul Bond Scholarship from the Delaware Valley Paleontological Society, Travis graduated with his Masters of Science in Applied Geoscience, and Lauren won the Audience Choice Award for the Penn SAS 60-Second-Slam. Congratulations!

April 24, 2017: Lauren gave a TED talk at TED 2017 in Vancouver as part of the 2017 class of TED Fellows. The talk was animated by Dennis Moore for the TED Blog and Lauren was interviewed by the lead singer of the band OK Go on Facebook Live (starting at 4:40)!

March 17, 2017: Erynn Johnson has been awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her awesome work on the role of crushing predation in macroevolution. Congratulations, Erynn!

February 20, 2017: Our paper on the identity of the 'Tully Monster' is out in Palaeontology. It is not a fish. Press coverage in the International Business Times, CBS News, Haaretz, ScienceDaily, DailyMail, Science Friday (radio), SF Gate (video) , Science News, and other outlets

February 2, 2017: Our research on fossil fishes is featured in The Daily Pennsylvanian

January 10, 2017: Lauren has been selected as a 2017 TED Fellow.  Read the announcement in Penn News and Fast Company. 

December 5, 2016: Our paper on the dual origin of vertebrate tails is out in Current Biology. Press Coverage in the DailyMail, Seeker (Discovery News), The Scientist, ScienceDaily and Deutschlandfunk.
























A 310-million-year-old freshwater ecosystem in Illinois
(Painting by John Megahan)

A phylogeny of living ray-finned fishes
(From Sallan, Biological Reviews, 2014)


A later shell-crushing ray-fin, 
Styracopterus, 340 million years ago
(Painting by John Megahan)