Early Reptile Rendevous

In 2023, IMNH paleontologists headed to France on an exciting new research avenue led by Earth Sciences Graduate Assistant and ISU PhD candidate Xavier Jenkins and Curator Brandon Peecook.

Xavier’s work is focused on the early evolution of reptiles: from the time of the split between reptile and mammals to the evolution of familiar reptiles like dinosaurs, crocodiles, and lizards. This is a poorly studied area of the tree of life spanning about 310 to 260 million years ago in the Carboniferous and Permian periods.

The most important early reptile fossils come from places like South Africa. These are small animals and usually are left mostly in the rock they were found in to protect their delicate skeletons. Jenkins and Peecook (and team) proposed to have the fossils scanned at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France: basically, to have them put into a super powerful X-ray with incredible resolution. Thankfully, the ESRF supported the project and the team headed to the Alps in September.

These data are being processed at the Museum's Idaho Virtualization Lab by our students and staff!