Earlier this week our very own Mayra Zuniga successfully defended her Master’s thesis on the U and M2 sandstone members in the Oriente Basin of Ecuador. A big congratulations to her on this great accomplishment, we can’t wait to see what she tackles next!
Read more about Mayra on her Ichnoplanet profile or LinkedIn pages!
A big congratulations to Dr. Carmona on her election as President of the Association for Women Geoscientists! Dr. Carmona is a brilliant researcher and science communicator, currently working at the National Univeristy of Rio Negro as a professor. Now, on top of her many accomplishments she will be the very first non-North American President of the AWG!
You can follow Dr. Carmona’s research here, and read an interview (in Spanish only) with her here.
Written by Brittany Laing
Luis Buatois continued his lecture tour during the first week of December with a stop at the University of Muenster (Germany) giving a Department Seminar on the work of animals in space and time. This was followed by a visit to Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia) for an invited talk on the trace fossil record of early Paleozoic evolutionary events and as external of the PhD defence of Ursula Toom. The trip to Estonia includes a visit to the Sarghava Field Station, the most likely host of the next Workshop on Ichnotaxonomy.
Dr. Toom’s research looks at the Ordovician and Silurian trace fossil record of Estonia, with some fantastic tomographic work. Her work isn’t done though! A prolific researcher, Ursula continues to shed light on the ancient life in Estonia from her position at Tallinn University. You can congratulate Dr. Toom and follow her research on her ResearchGate profile, and download her thesis from it’s record here.
Written by Dr. Luis Buatois and Brittany Laing
On October 17-24th, 2019 the International Meeting on the Ediacaran and the Ediacaran-Cambrian Transition (IMECT) in Guadalupe, Spain was held. Romain Gougeon represented the Ichnology Research Group with two projects: a talk on ‘The Ediacaran-Cambrian Chapel Island Formation of Newfoundland revisited: Evaluating changes in ecospace utilization by early animals’ and a poster on ‘Loops, circles, spirals and the appearance of guided behaviors from the Ediacaran-Cambrian of Brittany, NW France’. The meeting was organized by J. J. Álvaro and S. Jensen and have allowed the visit to the beautiful Villuercas-Ibores-Jara UNESCO Global Geopark during pre- and post-conference field trips. Highlights of these trips were: the access to the type species of Cloudina carinata in Nañamero; the geology of the Lower Alcudian Group and its striking unconformities; and the body fossils (Beltanelliformis) and trace fossils (simple horizontal grazing trails, treptichnids) from the Pusa and Cíjara formations. Romain is extremely thankful to J.J. Álvaro, I. Cortijo, S. Jensen, T. Palacios, A. Pieren Pidal and C. Quesada for their kindness and many fruitful conversations on the geology and paleontology of the region.
Sabbatical activities continued for Gabriela Mángano and Luis Buatois who visited the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (France) and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) within the framework of research on the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event during the last couple of weeks of November. In Lyon, Gabriela was an invited speaker for the European seminar with a talk on the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition and an interactive lecture for Master Students in Earth Sciences. Luis did a Department Seminar on the applications of ichnology in paleoenvironmental reconstructions.
By Luis Buatois
