Month: January 2020

Simone Conti, who completed the MSc in 2018, has published his Masters thesis on ‘The oldest lambeosaurine dinosaur from Europe: Insights into the arrival of Tsintaosaurini’ in Cretaceous Research for April 2020. He had the chance to work on some beautiful specimens from Spain, and it turns out the new specimens prove the existence of an unusual group of hadrosaurs, the Tsintaosaurini, in Europe, a group otherwise known from eastern Asia. Members of the tsintaosaurine tribe would have dispersed into the Ibero-Armorican Domain not later than the early Maastrichtian, coexisting with endemic dinosaurian groups for some time. Simone is now beginning his PhD in Portugal on the biomechanics of diplodocid sauropods, using engineering techniques, such as Finite Element Analyses and Multi-Body Simulation Systems. It is a joint PhD between the Aerospace Department of Politecnico of Milan (Italy) and the Geology Department of Universidade Nova of Lisbon (Portugal). You can read Simone’s paper here. The image shows the femur of Simone’s Spanish dinosaur.

Emma Schachner, who completed the Bristol MSc a while ago and is now a Professor at Louisiana State University, gave a TED talk at her University last year about her work on respiration in vertebrates and what this tells us about the origin and success of dinosaurs. The talk has now been selected to go live on the international TED talks site, and you can watch it here. The photo shows Emma and one of her greatest fans.