The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology’s 2018 Speaker Series starts this Thursday, January 18. with, First Steps onto the Tangled Bank: Evolutionary Experiments in the Early Tetrapod Form.
This talk will be presented by Jason Pardo, Ph. D. candidate at the University of Calgary.
The early origins of amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and caecilians) are not well understood. This is due to their rarity in the early fossil record, as well as an incomplete scientific understanding of four-legged vertebrate (tetrapod) evolution and the anatomy of possible amphibian relatives. Newly discovered fossils from the Triassic Period give us insights into the origins of caecilians, a group of limbless amphibians from tropical rainforests around the globe. This research contributes to an emerging picture of the early evolution of tetrapods, of which the origin of modern amphibians is a part.
In his presentation, Jason Pardo will talk about addressing the gaps in scientific understanding of early tetrapod evolution. Pardo and his colleagues used high-resolution medical imaging technologies to learn more about the possible fossil ancestors of modern amphibians.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum’s Speaker Series talks are free and open to the public. The series will be held every Thursday until April 26 at 11:00 a.m. in the Museum auditorium.
Speaker Series talks are also available on the Museum’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/c/RoyalTyrrellMuseumofPalaeontology.