Vertebrate palaeontologist focusing on mass extinctions and life history responses to these events
Jennifer Botha
First-Ever Egg of a Mammal Ancestor Discovered!
Research by myself, Julien Benoit (Wits) and Vincent Fernandez (ESRF) presents the first-ever egg of the therapsid Lystrosaurus, finally answering the question: Did the ancestors of mammals lay eggs? Yes, they did!
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Enele Twala and I have just returned from a trip to the ESRF in France. Enele is studying squamate bone histology and Roger Benson and Zoe Kulik from the AMNH and I are studying the osteohistology of basal amniotes. We obtained almost 250 scans for this project, and we can't wait to study the scans!
Hi! I've just presented at the International Symposium on Palaeohistology on sauropodomorph growth strategies across the end-Triassic mass extinction. Our first observation is that all sauropodomorphs and sauropodiformes exhibit growth marks from early ontogeny, contrary to Sauropoda. #sauropods
Here’s some photos from our latest field trip – with Adam Huttenlocker, Ken Angielczyk, Pia Viglietti, Claire Browning and Roger Smith. This is our second field season collecting rock samples for radiometrically dating the Permo-Triassic boundary in South Africa and so far, we have great results.
Oviparity was likely the plesiomorphic reproductive condition for non-mammalian Synapsida, the stem-mammal group. Yet, despite nearly two centuries of research, no definitive fossil eggs of late Palae...
