Green Tea and Velociraptors

Mass extinctions

Molecular clocks and the End-Permian mass extinction

Molecular clocks and the End-Permian mass extinction

Earth’s history is punctuated by extreme events known as mass extinctions. The End-Permian extinction, 252 million years ago, is believed to be the biggest, killing 90 % or more of all species – no wonder it is also called “The Great Dying”. The big question out there is to understand what caused it, but it …[Read More]

The greatest mass extinction in the history of life

In palaeontology, there are so many things more important than dinosaurs. For example, the study of large-scale patterns in the history of life on Earth, commonly known as macroevolution, is all about uncovering patterns of speciation and extinction. We are currently about to enter the sixth mass extinction within the last 542 million years of …[Read More]

Plan of action!

Crikey, it’s been 3 months already?! *panics* At Imperial College, new PhD students have to produce an initial plan of study within the first three months of setting off, and submit it for independent assessment. Having uploaded mine just now (not in the slightest bit late..), I figured I’d share it here! It’s a broad …[Read More]

Let the adventure begin!

The first post on this shiny new blog mentioned that I was going to offer a degree of transparency to my current role as a Palaeontology PhD student. I’ve only been going for 8 days, but already there’s plenty to talk about it seems! Here’s a few observations and thoughts about kicking off PhD life, …[Read More]