A 350-million-year-old marine ecosystem in Scotland
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.
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| Lauren Sallan, PhD
Assistant Professor
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
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!
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!
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| A 310-million-year-old freshwater ecosystem in Illinois
(From Sallan, Biological Reviews, 2014)
A later shell-crushing ray-fin, Styracopterus, 340 million years ago
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