Congrats Dr. Andrei Ichaso!

Last week, our own Andrei Ichaso successfully defended his doctoral thesis! His thesis focused on the stratigraphy, sedimentology, and ichnology of the middle Cambrian to Early Ordovician Deadwood Formation in western Canada and the midwestern United States. Congratulations Dr. Ichaso!

Andrei’s doctoral thesis earned him the University of Saskatchewan Graduate Thesis Award in the Physical & Engineering Sciences category from the College of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies at USASK. Congratulations Andrei!

Check out Andrei’s ICHNOPLANET profile here.

Written by Jack Milligan

Gabriela Mángano receives the Billings Award at the Canadian Paleontology Conference!

The 2023 Canadian Paleontology Conference was recently held at the University of Toronto Mississauga in Mississauga, Ontario, held by the Geological Association of Canada’s Paleontology Division (GAC PD). Our own Gabriela Mángano was honoured at the conference as the 2023 recipient of the Billings Award! This is an award given to those who have made an outstanding long-term contribution to any aspect of Canadian paleontology or by a Canadian to paleontology.

Gabriela is the first woman paleontologist to win this distinction! You can read more about the Billings Award on the GAC PD website here.

Photo provided by Luis Buatois

Huge congratulations to Gabriela from all of us at Ichnoplanet! You’ve certainly left traces of your wisdom in the substrate of paleontology!

Written by Jack Milligan

Gabriela Mángano receives the Distinguished Career Award at GSA!

At the annual meeting of the Geologic Society of America in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, our own Dr. Gabriela Mángano is the 2023 recipient of the Distinguished Career Award from the Geobiology and Geomicrobiology Division! We’re super thrilled to have Gabriela receive this awesome award and couldn’t agree more as to her deserving of this recognition.

From the Geologic Society of America Geobiology and Geomicrobiology Division website: “Gabriela has approached geobiology from the perspective of animal-substrate interactions in deep time. She likes to move along the geologic time scale to detect evolutionary breakthroughs and track the deep history of bioturbation. Her research attempts to reconstruct the emergence of modern marine benthic ecology discern environmental from evolutionary controls, and temporally calibrate ichnofacies and ichnofabrics.”

Congratulations Gabriela from all of us at Ichnoplanet!

Photos courtesy of the Geologic Society of America Geobiology and Geomicrobiology Division and Luis Buatois

Written by Jack Milligan

Dr. Mángano named Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of Argentina

Congratulations to our own Dr. Gabriela Mángano on becoming a Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Exact, Physical, and Natural Sciences of Argentina. The goal of the Academy of Sciences of Argentina is to promote the development and dissemination of exact, physical, and natural sciences in Argentina, including their technological applications to further the scientific progress of Argentina and its collaborators abroad. We’re happy to have Gabriela represent our research group as part of this collective group of researchers from Argentina and around the world.

You can learn more about the ANCEFN at their website.

Written by Jack Milligan

Three Ichnoplanet students at the University of Saskatchewan receive awards from the International Association of Sedimentologists!

Dr. Maximiliano Paz has received the International Association of Sedimentologists (IAS) Postdoctoral Research Grant. He is currently studying the sedimentology and ichnology of the Cambrian-Ordovician Los Cabos Series. These funds will be used to cover one month of fieldwork expenses to log 4000 m of the succession in the rocky cliffs of western Asturias, Spain.

Jack Milligan has received the IAS Judith McKenzie Fieldwork Award. He is studying the sequence stratigraphy and taphonomy of dinosaur bones including describing osteic bioerosion trace fossils from the latest Cretaceous Frenchman Formation. This funding will cover fieldwork expenses to measure coastal floodplain and fluvial outcrops along the Frenchman River Valley of southwestern Saskatchewan.

Federico Wenger also received the IAS Judith McKenzie Fieldwork Award. He will be studying the sequence stratigraphy and ichnology including the degree of bioturbation, ichnodisparity, and ichnodiversity to understand the different environmental zones of the Devonian Talacasto Formation, in the geological province of Precordillera, western Argentina. This funding will help finance the trip to the study area.

Congratulations to Maximiliano, Jack, and Federico, and best of luck with your fieldwork, and thank you to the International Association of Sedimentologists for helping fund Ichnoplanet research at USask!

Written by Jack Milligan