The main goal of my research is to better understand the substantial extinct biodiversity of invertebrate metazoans that first appear and rapidly diversified during the Paleozoic Era, the period of time comprising between 541 and 251 million years ago. Most of our current work focuses on the study of several Lower Paleozoic sites of exceptional preservation around the world. These remarkable fossiliferous deposits contain critical information on the morphology and organization of soft-bodied organisms, including details of the internal anatomy, which are otherwise dramatically underrepresented in the rock record. Our group has a strong interest in the origin and subsequent radiation of Ecdysozoa (moulting animals) during the Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, with emphasis on the morphology, phylogeny and development of extinct panarthropods – whose extant representatives include euarthropods, tardigrades and onychophorans. To this end, we combine traditional paleontological approaches with cutting edge techniques to obtain new morphological information from the fossils, test macroevolutionary hypotheses through deep time, and ultimately clarify the origin of the major animal groups that have shaped the biosphere for more than 500 million years.

Faculty Support: Melinda Peterson