Latest Lab News

July 2012

We've been busy these past three years! Robert, a new honorary member of SVP, has been on administrative leave after serving as chair of the Biology Department at UTM for six years. He has enjoyed travelling for research and pleasure; meanwhile, productivity in the lab has remained stellar.

Two new PhD students, Mark MacDougall, B.Sc., from Cape Breton University and Aaron LeBlanc, M.Sc., from the University of Alberta have joined the lab. Mark is studying the evolution, relationships and paleoecology of parareptiles from Oklahoma. Aaron is researching tooth implantation in basal amniotes. Jessica, Kirstin, and Aaron have all attended Martin Sander's workshop in histological methodology in Bonn, Germany. Kirstin will be heading to the Paleobiology Database Intensive Workshop in Analytical Methods at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, Summer 2012. Nic Campione is the proud new papa to Dominic Campione, and Caleb continues to be productive working on side projects involving lots of data.

Finally, we have been experimenting with new and exciting techniques in the lab, including CT scans, scanning electron microscopy, and histological examination of specimens using the histology lab at the ROM.

October 2009

The lab has undergone renovations! For the first time in 30 years, we've had to clear out the familiar piles and make room for new fixtures. Not that anyone has noticed but us. (Past students should note that we've thrown out all the mementos that you left behind). These changes come in the wake of our losing our airless, windowless student office (new space to come with the promised building extension). It almost overshadows the fellowship Robert received from the Royal Society of Canada!...almost.

Not that we have been very crowded. This summer, we said goodbye to Drs. Jörg and Nadia Fröbisch who are currently working on postdoc appointments in Chicago and have a new baby girl, Jana. We also bid farewell to Brendan Polley, who has accepted a high school teaching position in Biology after completing his masters research project just this September. Masters of Science Nicolas Campione and Jessica Hawthorn continue work on their Ph.D.s but while Jess is here with us at UTM, Nic spends most of his time at the ROM, where he is co-supervised by David Evans and Robert. Also joining our team are M.Scs. Kirstin Brink and Caleb Brown from the Universities of Alberta and Calgary respectively. Kirstin will be working at UTM for her Ph.D. on a redescription the spectacular Dimetrodon, and Caleb will be co-supervised at the ROM by David so he can work on Centrosaurus for his Ph.D. Dave Mazierski is currently working on a new description of Petrolacosaurus.

We have also heard rumors that the prodigal son, Richard Kissel will be defending his Ph.D. thesis in December. Way to go Richard!

December 2008

This past summer marked an event rivaling the great Permian extinction, namely, the entire Reisz Lab graduate student contingent finished their projects, leaving behind a very quiet lab. OK, most of the students didn’t really LEAVE: only Dr. Kaila Folinsbee headed south to other pastures, taking a teaching position in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. Dr. Jörg Fröbisch has been joined by his wife Dr. Nadia Fröbisch (McGill 2008) to work on a postdoc appointment for a few months (postdoc appointments in Chicago are on tap for early 2009); Master of Science Nicolas Campione is working on a Ph.D. on hadrosaurs at the ROM co-supervised by David Evans and Robert, while Dave Mazierski continues to hang around the lab anyway, as he has his part-time appointment in Biomedical Communications and is just in the next building over... Robert has some project ideas for him to work on, as soon as he finishes reformatting his thesis for publication.

Brendan Polley, former undergraduate whiz kid, has returned to the lab as a Masters student after having completed a degree in education to resume work on his trematopid, now as his M.Sc. thesis project. Jessica Hawthorn has also joined us, with an M.Sc. from the University of Alberta. Her Ph.D. project will be on the phylogenetics and ecology of ophiacodontid eupelycosaurs. Nicola Wong Ken, a graduate of the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning Scientific Illustration program, is taking some biology courses and doing some excellent preparation and illustration work, complementing Diane Scott’s always excellent preparation and illustrations. So... the lab is actually a busy place, as usual

January 2007

Robert is the recipient of two prestigious awards: Election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the The Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, Election as a Fellow of AAAS is an honor bestowed upon members by their peers; Fellows are recognized for meritorious efforts to advance science or its applications. Robert and the other newly elected Fellows will be recognized for their contributions to science and technology at the Fellows Forum to be held on 17 February 2007 during the AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco.The Alexander von Humboldt Research Award recognizing career-long achievement in research and teaching. Scientists and scholars who are nominated for a Humboldt Research Award must have contributed fundamental discoveries, new theories or insights that significantly impact their own research area and also reach beyond their specialized field of research. Robert can now conduct an original research project of his own design in close collaboration with an appropriate colleague in Germany over a period of six to twelve months, and he will also receive a monetary award.

Grad students David Evans, Kaila Folinsbee (or "K-La" to her paleo-posse) and Joerg Frobisch continue work on their research projects; Hillary, who joined our lab only a paragraph ago, has finished her M.Sc. and has moved on to Calgary; and a whole new flock of budding palaeontologists and scientists have landed on the venerable Erindale (oops, we don't call it that anymore) campus: Professor Jason Head, Nic Campione (came for the dinosaurs, stayed for the Varanopids), Matt Hutchison (has the perfect accent for those Gideon Mantell impersonations) and Dave Mazierski (following in Sean Modesto's footsteps with another kick at the Ianthasaurus clan). If that wasn't a big enough group, we also have undergraduate Brendan Polley doing some fantastic prep work and Biomedical Communications grad student Heidi Richter working on a Flash-based animation of the locomotion and ontogeny of Massospondylus carinatus. On some afternoons, the lab is so crowded that there isn't enough room to swing a microsaur...

August 2004

Yet another student has joined our group, our former undergrad whiz-kid, Hillary Maddin. For her MSc project she will be studying the cranial anatomy of Ennatosaurus, the Middle Permian caseid from Northern Russia. This summer David Evans led an intrepid group of students (personal slaves) on a dino-dig in Alberta. In addition to fellow students Kaila and Linda, Dr. J and Robert Reisz have also contributed to the very successful field season, even though many days were lost to the unpredictable Alberta weather. In addition to the UTM crew, David was greatly assisted by several able volunteers (you know who you are), including Thomas Top Gun Turk.

Robert and Kaila attended the First International Phylogenetic Nomenclature Meeting in Paris, and presented talks early amniotes and primates. Robert stayed on and worked at the MNHN and completed his description of a new caseid from the Rodez region of France.

March 2004

There has been an influx of new students to the Reisz lab in September 2003. The four students will be taking on projects that cover a wide temporal and taxonomic range. Jörg Fröbisch is working on trends in dicynodont evolution, David Evans is focusing on the ontogeny and phylogeny of lambeosaurine hadrosaurids, Linda Tsuji's Masters project will be a revision to the Russian parareptile Macroleter, and Kaila Folinsbee is investigating the paleobiogeography of Pleistocene baboons from karst deposits of South Africa.

Jason Anderson has moved on to a teaching position at the Western University of Health Sciences in San Diego. The lab wishes him the best with his new job. Hot on the heels of Jason, Johannes Mueller is a postdoctoral fellow new to the Reisz lab. He is working with Robert on the early diversification of eureptiles, including an exciting new early eureptile taxon from the Garnett Quarry, Kansas.

As a result of almost four solid months of proposal writing, Robert and several prominent collaborators have received an NSERC Collaborative Research Opportunity grant to study Canadian hadrosaurid dinosaurs. David Evans will contribute his investigations on Alberta hadrosaurids to this project. Kevin Dupuis is back yet again, this time illustrating and preparing hadrosaur material for the CRO project.

Robert and Kaila recently returned from a suspiciously vacation-like three-week research trip to picturesque South Africa. They visited Plio-Pleistocene cave deposit sites containing hominid and baboon remains as part of Kaila's thesis project, in the region around Johannesburg. Robert also surveyed museum collections for dicynodont material for Joerg, while keeping an ever keen and lustful eye out for any varanopids that may turn up for himself. The lab is looking forward to a safari through South Africa, supposedly while attending the always-exciting Gondwana paleobiology conference in July 2004.

September 2002

*Cough* And you thought Corwin was "sometimes diligent"...

Professor Reisz has been typically busy over the recent past. He has coauthored a couple of recent papers in Nature on the development of lungfish tooth plates (Reisz and Smith, 2001) and the first herbivorous amniote that "chewed" its food, with former lab member Natalia Rybcznski (Rybcznski and Reisz, 2001). He and former student Michel Laurin have contributed an article (Reisz and Laurin, 2001) and discussion paper (Reisz and Laurin, 2002) on Macroleter and a possible correlation between the Permian deposits of North America and Russia, in the GSA Bulletin. Varanopid projects are coming fast and furious, with a paper describing a new genus from the Hamilton Quarry being accepted by the Canadian Journal of Earth Science (Reisz and Dilkes, in press) and another new genus, this time from Russia, is described in a paper currently being reviewed by the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Anderson and Reisz, in review). On-going studies sees Robert having to "work" in Russia and Paris. On top of all of this Robert has assumed the duties of Associate Editor for the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Jason's big news is his recent receipt of an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship, which supports his investigations into the relationships of Paleozoic tetrapods and the origins of modern amphibians. In collaboration with Drs. John Bolt and David Berman Jason is beginning studies of various dissorophoid temnospondyls, ultimately to incorporate these groups into his (Anderson, 2001, Systematic Biology) analysis of lepospondyl relationships to test various hypotheses about the origin of modern amphibians. Additionally, he has recently returned proof sheets on his revision of the aistopod Phlegethontia (Anderson, 2002, Journal of Paleontology) and a discussion paper on phylogenetic taxonomy in Systematic Biology (Anderson, 2002). Two other papers from his thesis are accepted and will be out...sometime, in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Finally, Jason just returned from a field trip to Hortons Bluff, Nova Scotia, where he found some tetrapod fossils and learned all about the bloodworm fishery.

Richard is plugging away on his thesis work. He has his name on several abstracts for the upcoming Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 2002 meetings. He spent another summer's field season at the Bromacker Quarry in Germany with the Carnegie Museum crew, finding fossils that may contribute to his current project describing a new diadectid from that locality. His master's project has been published in the Journal of Paleontology (Kissel and Lehman, 2002), a paper on a new species of Captorhinus is coming soon (this month) in the Canadian Journal of Earth Science (Kissel, Dilkes and Reisz, 2002), and a paper describing a new synapsid from the Hamilton Quarry is currently in review (Reisz and Kissel, in review). Finally, Richard is really looking forward to his coursework this year. And if you believe that...

David, other than teaching like mad, planning his upcoming nuptials (Congrats David!) and contributing to the aforementioned papers on the Hamilton Quarry varanopid and Richards Spur captorhinid, is bringing his exhaustive description of Doswellia to conclusion. Aiding him in illustration preparation was Kevin Dupuis, who did a term internship with David as part of his biological illustration program at Sheridan College. Kevin did such amazing work (and so quickly!) that Robert hired him for the summer. His contract has been extended to December now, and we've no real good idea when we'll finally be rid of him. He's even becoming a skilled preparator!

December 2000

Much time has passed since the last update. The "sometimes diligent" previous maintainer of this page, Corwin Sullivan, has successfully defended his M.Sc. ("Cranial anatomy of the Late Permian dicynodont Diictodon, and its bearing on aspects of the taxonomy, palaeobiology and phylogenetic relationships of the genus") and has packed off his html editor and headed south to Harvard. There he has began his PhD studies with Prof. Farrish Jenkins in the Museum of Comparative Zoology on a subject "that has not been decided upon yet." We wish Corwin well in his future endeavors, although papers in collaboration with members of this lab are continuing.

With the sadness of saying good-bye comes the excitement of seeing new faces! The Reisz lab wishes to welcome new graduate student Richard Kissel, fresh from an MS from Texas Tech University, under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Lehman. Richard (after a detour to Bromacker, Germany) is off and running, putting together a paper with David Dilkes on captorhinomorphs, as well as teaching two sections of Vertebrate Form and Function. Richard is joined in the office by new postdoc Jason Anderson, who has just defended his Ph.D. thesis ("Anatomy, functional morphology and phylogeny of Aistopoda (Vertebrata; Tetrapoda)") at the Redpath Museum of McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Robert Carroll. Jason will be continuing phylogenetic investigations into the relationships of Paleozoic "amphibians" (if he can ever find the time amidst all the marking). Finally, Sean Modesto, a former graduate student in the lab, has returned to Toronto after a three year postdoc in South Africa. Sean is now working with Hans-Dieter Sues at the R.O.M. on early reptiles.

Two recent projects have come to fruition (and a fair amount of press!). The "bolosaurid" project so frequently mentioned in these pages has now seen print in Science. Eudibamus is the first tetrapod to show adaptations towards bipedal locomotion, and its not a dinosaur! The specimen comes from the Permian Bromacker locality in Germany, and predates bipedal dinosaurs and advanced archosauromorphs like Lagosuchus by 80 million years. The second paper, published in Nature, disputes claims by other researchers that the elongate dermal structures found on the undetermined archosaurimorph Longisquama are an early stage of feather development. The structures in Longisquama, unlike feathers, are found to be thick vein-less, and quite different in detail from what is found in feathers

April 2000

Thanks to the end of the spring term, Corwin, David and Robert are all liberated from their teaching responsibilities and have been enjoying the opportunity to concentrate on research and other weighty matters; Robert went so far as to abscond to Hungary for a brief but enjoyable vacation, while David returned to preparing his Doswellia material with a vengeance. The bolosaurid project is drawing near to completion, and Diane's very lifelike reconstruction of the animal is now complete apart from editorial revisions. Diane has also been working like mad on a paper describing a methodology for drawing skull reconstructions, in collaboration with former student Natalia Rybczynski (now at Duke University). Corwin, presently suffering through the process of reconstructing the infuriatingly complex cranium of Diictodon, wishes they'd written it months ago so that he could form some coherent idea of what he's actually supposed to be doing. On the positive side, he managed to finish off a preliminary version of his tetrapod phylogeny study, and was gratified to hear that his paper on Richards Spur dissorophoids (with Robert, and Bill May from Oklahoma) has finally been accepted for publication.

On the cyberspace side of things, the "lab personnel page" is now up and running at last, so the framework of the web site is essentially complete. Traffic has been a bit disappointing so far, but Corwin has grandiose plans to rectify the situation by convincing all the really popular palaeontology sites to link to us - we'll see what happens. We've also found out that Robert's former student Sean Modesto will probably be returning from South Africa to start post-doctoral work at the Royal Ontario Museum in September, so we're all eagerly anticipating his arrival. We've also managed to recruit another graduate student, Richard Kissel from Pennsylvania, so he should be joining us in the fall as well.

March 2000

We're finally on line! After nearly three months of designing, implementing, re-designing, re-implementing, and simply procrastinating, we've finally succeeded in throwing together a semi-presentable version of this web site. In the meantime, we've been slogging ahead with our "real work", which as usual involves juggling several different research projects with various teaching and other responsibilities. In collaboration with David Berman of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Robert and Diane are approaching the final stages of a descriptive study of a bolosaurid reptile from the Permian of Germany - that very hole in the ground, in fact, where Corwin got so disgracefully filthy last summer (see the Methods page). It's a small lizard-like creature, but remarkable for its light, gracile build and its probable ability to adopt a bipedal gait from time to time. Diane is dividing her time between a "fleshed out" reconstruction of this animal and some preparatory work on enigmatic fossil eggs that Robert recently brought back from South Africa, as well as a beautiful skull of the synapsid Ophiacodon. For reasons known only to her, she has christened the latter specimen "Tina".

When not preoccupied with his extensive teaching responsibilities, David is continuing to work on an early, heavily armoured archosaur called Doswellia, together with Hans Sues of the Royal Ontario Museum. Corwin is frantically trying to wrap up a short study on the phylogeny of tetrapods, in addition to his ongoing M.Sc. thesis research on the dicynodont "mammal-like reptile" Diictodon. The distant light at the end of the thesis tunnel is now bright enough that Corwin is hoping to wrap things up by the end of summer and move on to Ph.D. work at Harvard in the fall, which should be entirely possible provided that he is willing to forget about sleeping for three or four weeks.