Read speaker biographies - Natural History Museum

Speaker biographies
The Woodward150 Symposium
21 May 2014
Woodward's contributions on fossil reptiles
Dr Paul Barrett
Dr Barrett is a dinosaur researcher and head of the Vertebrates
and Anthropology Palaeobiology Division at the Natural History
Museum, London.
Dr Barrett joined the Museum in 2003 following academic
appointments at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. A
global expert on the evolution and biology of dinosaurs and
other extinct reptiles, he has published more than 100 scientific
papers and books.
Current research interests
the biology of plant-eating dinosaurs
describing new dinosaur species
large-scale evolutionary processes, such as the
coevolution of animals and plants through time
Dr Barrett has travelled extensively to work on museum collections and to conduct fieldwork in China, the UK, and
South Africa. He edits the leading journal in the field (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology) and is President of The
Palaeontographical Society.
Dr Barrett is also an enthusiastic science communicator. He is a frequent contributor to the Museum’s public
programme and to dinosaur-related news in the UK and international media. He is the author of the award-winning
children's book National Geographic Dinosaurs.
Dr Angela Milner
Dr Milner is a Scientific Associate in the Vertebrates and Anthropology
Palaeobiology Division at the Natural History Museum, specialising in
dinosaur and early amphibian research. Angela has worked in the Museum
since 1976 and was Associate Keeper of Palaeontology and Head of the
Palaeontology Research Division from 2001 until she retired in December
2009 to concentrate on research.
Current research interests
Carboniferous nectrideans (aquatic horned amphibians).
Biology and systematics of spinosaurs (fish eating dinosaurs).
Using CT to study the evolution of bird brains including
Archaeopteryx.
Angela has collected fossils in many countries including China, the
southern Sahara Desert in Niger and also closer to home. The most
important discovery with which she is associated – the fish-eating
dinosaur Baryonyx – was found just 30 miles south of London.
She has published more than 150 research papers, popular articles and books. Angela was the scientific advisor to
the Museum’s current permanent dinosaur gallery and revised The Natural History Museum’s Book of Dinosaurs
through two further editions. She has worked on many temporary exhibitions including arranging Dino-Birds: The
Feathered Dinosaurs of China in the Museum in 2003, for which she wrote an accompanying book Dino-Birds.
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Arthur Smith Woodward and human evolution
Prof Christopher Dean
Prof Dean is Professor of anatomy in the Department of
Anatomy and Cell Biology at University College London (UCL).
Prof Dean studied dental surgery, human biology and
anatomy, obtaining his PhD for research on the comparative
anatomy of the hominoid cranial base in 1983 (UCL).
Current research interests
human evolutionary anatomy
comparative dental histology in living and fossil
hominoids
determining the evolutionary origins of our modern
18-20 year-long growth period
He has a long research association with Chris Stringer, Louise Humphrey and the Human Origins Group at the
Museum. Prof Dean has published extensively on topics related to his research, and co-authored two textbooks:
Introduction to Evolutionary Anatomy, with Leslie Aiello (1990)
Core Anatomy for Students with John Pegington (1995)
Confusion and chimaeras – Woodward and the problems of Palaeozoic chondrichthyans
Dr Chris Duffin
Dr Duffin is a Scientific Associate in the Earth Science Department at the
Natural History Museum, London. Recently retired from teaching, Dr Chris
Duffin was formerly Senior Master, Director of Sixth Form, Head of Biology
and Head of Critical Thinking at Streatham and Clapham High School in
south London.
Following a Geology degree, Chris obtained an MSc and PhD, in Vertebrate
Palaeontology at University College London.
He has published extensively on a wide range of fossil groups, but is
particularly concerned with sharks and their allies. He recently co-authored
the Handbook of Paleoichthyology Volume 3D: Chondrichthyes IV:
Paleozoic Elasmobranchii: Teeth (2010, Friedrich Pfeil Verlag).
Chris received the Palaeontological Association’s Mary Anning Award for outstanding contributions to
palaeontology in 2011. The history of Geology is a relatively recent interest. His edited volume A History of
Geology and Medicine was published by the Geological Society of London in November 2013.
Woodward’s ideas on fish classification
Dr Peter Forey
Dr Forey began as a research scientist at the Museum in 1975 and
retired in 2005. He specialised in the history of fishes, using the
extensive collections that demonstrate an excellent fossil record.
He investigated the evolution of a wide variety of fishes from
armoured fishes without jaws to some of the most specialised among
the modern fauna. He had a particular liking for the history of
coelacanth fishes.
The starting point for Dr Forey’s research projects was always
Woodward’s Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes in the British Museum
(Natural History).
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What Woodward did not see: bony
fishes of the English chalk and London
Clay revealed by CT scanning
Dr Matt Friedman
Dr Friedman grew up outside Cleveland, Ohio,
USA, famous for its remarkably well-preserved
Devonian fishes.
He completed his undergraduate degree in
biology and geology at the University of
Rochester, an MPhil in zoology at the University
of Cambridge, and a PhD in evolutionary biology
at the University of Chicago.
Now a lecturer in palaeobiology at the University of Oxford, his current research focuses on the use of fossils to
document the evolution of anatomical novelty and morphological diversity in vertebrates, with an emphasis on
fishes. Specimens named and described by Arthur Smith Woodward represent key resources for this line of study.
The ontogeny of vertebrate phylogeny
Joe Keating
Joe Keating is a NERC-CASE PhD student at the University of
Bristol and the Natural History Museum.
Joe’s research is concerned with the evolution of the
vertebrate skeleton. In particular. he studies fossil jawless
fishes that occupy the lineage leading to jawed vertebrates,
which can reveal the piecemeal assembly of the vertebrate
skeleton.
Joe uses traditional microscopy techniques, as well as state of
the art synchrotron X-Ray tomography, to study the
microstructure and development of the earliest vertebrate
skeletons. Using this data, he aims to determine how growth
of a mineralised skeleton has evolved through time.
Joe’s PhD is supervised by Philip Donoghue (University of Bristol) and Zerina Johanson (Natural History Museum).
Woodward’s giant coelacanths
Dr John G. Maisey
Dr Maisey completed a BSc (Hons) at University of Exeter in 1970, then a
PhD at the University of London (University College) in 1974. Since 1979
he has been Curator of Fossil Fishes and Axelrod Research Chair in the
Vertebrate Paleontology Department of the American Museum of Natural
History,
Dr Maisey’s current research is focused on skeletal morphology and
evolution of chondrichthyans (shark-like jawed vertebrates). Little was
previously known about the anatomy of early shark-like fishes, so modern
shark anatomy was widely used as a default paradigm for jawed
vertebrates.
New, well-preserved fossil sharks from the Paleozoic of North America,
Bolivia and South Africa are being investigated, mostly utilising
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tomographic scanning technology and computerised segmentation of fossil and modern shark-like fishes. Recent
findings suggest that modern sharks are highly specialised, and that the inner ear structure, braincase and visceral
arch morphology in some early chondrichthyans were more like in osteichthyans (bony fishes).
Other research involves fossil fishes from western Gondwana (especially South America). Working closely with
colleagues in Brazil, Dr Maisey is attempting to recognise distribution patterns among early Cretaceous fishes
within the complex tectonic realm that would eventually mark the separation between central South America and
Africa (the East Brazilian Rift System; EBRIS). A broadly distributed endemic early fauna was replaced by more
localized ones as tectonic activity led to increased definition of smaller geographic regions prior to continental
separation.
‘A splendid position’ – the life, achievements and contradictions of Sir Arthur Smith
Woodward
Karolyn Shindler
Karolyn Shindler’s association with the Natural History
Museum began when she wrote Discovering Dorothea, the
biography of the pioneering fossil-hunter, Dorothea Bate.
Since then Karolyn has used the Museum’s Library and
Archives to research and write about the lives of some of
the outstanding characters linked to the Museum,
including Sir Richard Owen and the Marchioness of
Hastings.
She gives talks and curates exhibitions at the Museum and
is a contributor to the Museum’s magazine Evolve, the
Daily Telegraph and various journals. Since 2011, she has
written a series of articles on the Piltdown forgery for
Evolve and the Daily Telegraph, and also curated the
Museum’s Piltdown exhibition.
Karolyn read history at Oxford and then became a current affairs producer at the BBC and was political producer
of BBC 2’s Newsnight. She has been a freelance writer since leaving the BBC and is a scientific associate of the
Museum.
The Natural History Museum fossil fish collections – Woodward’s role in the development
and use of this priceless resource
Dr Mike Smith
Dr Smith is a semi-retired structural engineer working in
the offshore oil and gas industry. Having read the book
Trilobite! by Richard Fortey (Natural History Museum) in
2000, he joined a number of clubs and began to collect
fossils in the UK.
Dr Smith developed a special interest in fossil fish after
he had the opportunity to collect Palaeozoic fish from
the north of Scotland and Orkney.
Researching the osteolepid fish that he collected and
reading Gaining Ground by Jenny Clack and Your Inner
Fish by Neil Shubin drew him deeper into the
fascinating area of the fish-tetrapod transition to the
extent that he decided to join the Natural History
Museum as a volunteer in November 2010.
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Working with the fossil fish collection Dr Smith became aware of the huge importance of Smith Woodward to this
collection. When the Museum’s palaeontology department was looking to commemorate people and events he
suggested Smith Woodward and the 150th anniversary of his birth.
The understanding of the Mesozoic and
Cenozoic chondrichthyan fossil record
Dr Charlie Underwood
Dr Underwood did his BSc in Geology at the University of
Exeter, followed by a PhD on Graptolites at the University of
Bristol, where he developed an interest in Jurassic sharks due
to colleagues working on Jurassic vertebrate sites.
Dr Underwood then went to the University of Liverpool and
worked on a number of topics including sharks of the
Cretaceous of Yorkshire.
Since 2000 he has been at Birkbeck (University of London)
working on fossil sharks from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic,
largely of the UK, Egypt and Morocco.
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