We are excited to announce that the Palaeoverse Lecture Series will continue through 2026. The series remains dedicated to software development and methodological approaches in palaeontology, with the aim of promoting the use of new tools in the field and to give researchers a platform to showcase their work. The format remains flexible and will generally include a short seminar followed by a demonstration of the speakerâs software toolkit and/or method, concluding with a Q&A session.
Lectures will be held from 15:00â16:00 UTC.
For this first set of talks, we will be joined by the following four speakers:
February 26th 2026 â Dr Natalie Cooper, Natural History Museum (UK)
Hack-a-thons: what, why, and how to run them
March 26th 2026 â Dr Brooke Long-Fox, Phoenix Bioinformatics (USA)
Building Open, Reproducible Palaeontology: A Practical Introduction to FAIR Data and MorphoBank
April 30th 2026 â Dr Joseph Flannery-Sutherland, University of Birmingham (UK)
Cleaning taxonomy, time, and their messy interactions with the fossilbrush R package
May 28th 2026 â Dr Alexandra Howard, Texas A&M University (USA)
Using palaeontological, neontological, and spatial data to understand evolution through time and space
Please register below for the series. All are welcome to join and we ask that all participants abide by the Palaeoverse Code of Conduct.
Previous lectures
January 29th 2026 â Dr Johannes De Groeve, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Tips for TABS (Temporal Altitudinal Biogeographic Shifts)
At the request of the speaker, this lecture is not publicly available. However, you may request a private link to the talk from either Dr Johannes De Groeve or Dr Erin Dillon.
December 18th 2025 â Dr Juan Cantalapiedra, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (Spain)
Mammals as a key to evolutionary theory
November 20th 2025 â Dr Carrie Tyler, University of Nevada (USA)
The high fidelity of trophic structure in ancient marine ecosystems: from functional diversity to food webs
October 30th 2025 â Dr Oskar Hagen, Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany)
Mechanistic biodiversity modelling with gen3sis: population-based simulations across regional and global domains to deep and shallow time
September 25th 2025 - Dr NicolĂĄs Mongiardino Koch, Princeton University and Dr Russell Garwood, University of Manchester
The Tree of Life and Death: What do Fossil Taxa Contribute to Morphological Phylogenetics?
August 28th 2025 - Amy Shipley, University of Leeds
Modelling ancient food webs: ecosystem changes across the Pliocene marine megafaunal extinction
June 26th 2025 - Dr Katie Collins, Natural History Museum (UK)
Both round and upward: Spiral morphometry and how to compare things that are the same, but different
May 29th 2025 - Dr Allison Hsiang, Stockholm University
Automating large-scale morphometric data generation using AutoMorph and deep learning
April 24th 2025 - Dr Richard Stockey, University of Southampton
Modelling ancient animal habitats in space and time: linking fossils and Earth system models
March 27th 2025 - Dr OndĹej Mottl - Charles University
FOSSILPOL: The Workflow To Process Global Palaeoecological Data Of Fossil Pollen For Vegetation-Based Macroecological Synthesis
February 27th 2025 - Dr Xia Wang, Chengdu University of Technology
DDE-Outcrop3D: an interactive platform for digital outcrop models
January 30th 2025 - Dr ĂdĂĄm Kocsis, FAU Erlangen-NĂźrnberg
The ârgplatesâ interface to tectonic calculations in R: overview, updates and related projects
Lecture materials
December 19th 2024 - Dr Thomas Guillerme, University of Sheffield
Top 10 of the best disparity metrics to use in palaeobiology; number 10 might surprise you!
Lecture materials: Vignette | Code
November 21st 2024 - Dr Roxanne Banker, Providence College
Quantitative approaches to understanding marine ecosystems: Insights from Stellarâs Sea Cow and ancient food webs
October 31st 2024 - Niklas Hohmann, Utrecht University
Building modeling pipelines for stratigraphic paleobiology in R
Lecture materials: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14001502
September 26th 2024 - Dr Euan Furness, University of Cambridge
Reproducing emergent eco-evolutionary patterns from a first-principles agent-based model
August 29th 2024 - Dr Rafaela Missagia, Universidade de SĂŁo Paulo
Advancing morphological research with computed tomography: a case study on predatory rodents
July 25th 2024 - Dr Gawain Antell, University of California
Spatially standardized subsampling for fair comparisons and meaningful characterisations of ecological metrics through time
At the request of the speaker, this lecture is not publicly available. However, you may request a private link to the talk from either Dr Gawain Antell or Dr Erin Dillon.
June 27th 2024 - Dr April Wright, Southeastern Louisiana University
Models, Meaning, and the Middle Cambrian
May 30th 2024 - Prof. Daniele Silvestro, University of Fribourg
Neural network models to infer diversity trajectories and the drivers of speciation and extinction
April 25th 2024 - Laura Mulvey, FAU Erlangen-NĂźrnberg
Assessing the adequacy of morphological models used in palaeobiology
March 28th 2024 - Dr Benjamin Shipley, University of Oxford
Modelling species range shifts in the past and future
February 29th 2024 - Dr Emily Mitchell, University of Cambridge
Using Spatial point process analyses to quantify the behavioural ecology behind trace fossils