Author: HillaryMaddin

Calling all interested graduate students to apply for one of our exciting projects launching Fall 2023. In partnership with the New Brunswick Museum, our Carleton-based team comprised of Drs. Maddin, Danielle Fraser, and Tetsuto Miyashita seeks enthusiastic students to participate in projects aimed at exploring the Carboniferous vertebrates of New Brunswick. Projects include a variety of foundational and integrative research that will combine traditional and modern techniques to understand the evolution of vertebrates in this critical time period. See image below for instructions on how to apply.

PhD Candidate Dana Korneisel is this year’s recipient of the prestigious Cohen Award, given annually for graduate student excellence by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Dana’s PhD research aims to understand anatomical, developmental, and functional innovations at the the skull-neck boundary that aided in the water-to-land transition. Congrats Dana!

Big congrats to Dr. Brad McFeeters, dinosaur expert extraordinaire! Brad’s thesis revealed many new insights into North American hadrosaurs, including the first record of Maiasaura in Canada, ontogeny of the braincase and new insights into hadrosaur phylogeny. Brad published parts of this work, including one chapter that was selected as Editor’s Choice in Acta Paleontologica Polonica. Way to go, Brad! (Photo credit: Alex Predietis)

See papers in Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences and Acta Paleontologica Polonica.

A huge congratulations to former PhD student Jade Atkins, who was recently appointed Director/Curator of the Joggins Fossil Institute. Jade returns to her home province to take on this prestigious role, where she will conduct local research and promote community engagement at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs Center, in Joggins, Nova Scotia. We look forward to ongoing research collaborations with Jade in this new post and can’t wait to see what she finds in her own research. See you every summer in the field!

In partnership with Matt Stimson and Dr. Donald McAlpine of the New Brunswick Museum, Drs. Maddin, Danielle Fraser, and Tetsuto Miyashita will launch an Alliance-funded project aimed at developing the Carboniferous vertebrate paleontology of New Brunswick. Stay tuned for recruitment, as the project begins fall 2023.

Congratulations to the recently minted Dr. Jade Atkins and Master Erin MacKenzie. Jade’s thesis makes great strides in understanding the morphology and potential developmental mechanisms underlying evolution of the tetrapod skull-neck boundary, using axolotl and Xenopus as models. Erin conducted several pioneering experiments revealing the role of the brain in the development of the skull in Xenopus laevis. Erin is off to the UK to complete a graduate program in clinical embryology at Oxford University. (Photo credits: Alex Predietis)

We wish Master Gabby Adams and Doctor Arjan Mann a huge congratulations for completing their degrees this summer. As founding members of the #TetrapodSquad, their research sheds new light on embolomeres from Nova Scotia and the tetrapods from Mazon Creek. These newly minted experts have bright futures ahead and we can’t wait to see whats next. The #MaddinLab will miss you both! Good luck on your next adventure.

A couple years ago, field team member Brian Hebert made an amazing discovery along the coast of Cape Breton Island. A lycopsid stump like no other found yet! Inside a pair of varanopids, one large and one very small, curled up in denning position.

Artwork by Henry Sharpe.

This fossil represents a new earliest record of varanopids, Canada’s first varanopids, and most interestingly, apparently a new earliest record of extended parental care in an amniote, and even a tetrapod.

The pair were carefully prepared back in the lab by Arjan and myself, illustrated and analyzed. The results of that research were published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Email me for a copy!