Collaborators
Scientific collaborators
Fernando Abdala
Fernando is an excellent supervisor and one of the greatest specialists on therapsid synapsids in the world. I started working with him during my postdoctoral fellow at the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of Witwatersrand where I was investigating the dental anatomy of gomphodont cynodonts. An amazing coincidence was that both Fernando and my wife come from San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, and when Fernando decided to move and work to Tucumán, it was a normal decision for me to pursue my research on cynodonts with him in this city. I now have been working at the Unidad Ejecutora Lillo for the past three years under Prof. Abdala's supervision. Fernando gave me the opportunity to finish several project on dinosaurs due to the confinement and I will thank him for that for the rest of my life! Thanks to him, I could pursue my research and publish a couple of papers on dinosaur integument. We, however, have many project on the cynodont dental evolution together, which will be published in the next few years. As a paleontologist fascinated by dinosaurs from an early age, I'm so grateful to have been introduced to cynodonts as this enabled me to expand my expertise to non-dinosaur vertebrates. Cynodont evolution and dental anatomy are indeed very interesting. Working with Fernando in Lillo has therefore been more than a pleasure and I hope to get a permanent position here in Tucumnán and carry on working with him in the future.
Jonah Choiniere
Jonah was my main supevisor at the Evolutionary Studied Insitute of the University of the Witwatersrand where I was a postdoctoral fellow for three years. He has a tremendous knowledge on fieldwork, anatomy, statistics and know the best tools to investigate macroevolution in extinct organisms. I was pleased to carry on my research on theropods with him, being one of the leading experts on coelurosaur dinosaurs. Jonah is also excellent in getting grants and I was able to travel to and visit collection in China, South America, North America and Europe thanks to him. I learned a lot about statistics, cladistics and macroevolution with him. We have published several papers on the dental evolution of theropod dinosaurs and gomphodont cynodonts together but the most important articles on these topics are yet to come.
Phil Bell
Phil is THE specialist on dinosaur skin, having developed an solid expertise on the subject. It was, therefore, a logical decision for me to invite him to be part of a project I was developing on non-avian theropod skin. This collaboration was fruitful beyond any expectation, leading to several publications in journals such as Current Biology, Palaeontology and Cretaceous Research. Phil and I still have many projects on dinosaur integument together, among which several should be published in high ranking journals and receive media attention. Collaborating with Phil Bell was one of the best decisions I made in my career as he is extremely effective in writing papers (which he write really well) and particularly available to communicate with. I have also learned a lot from Phil on dinosaur integument and intend to carry on working on this topic as a lot more can be found that can give us pivotal information on how dinosaurs looked.
Octávio Mateus
Octávio was my PhD supervisor at the Universidad Nova de Lisboa from 2010 to 2014. Emanuel Tschopp and I were his first PhD students and both of us ended up finding postdoc opportunities abroad directly after. Octávio indeed helped us a lot publishing papers, as he gave us a lot of freedom to work on our PhD thesis and all the tools necessary to get good papers out. I also learned a lot from him on anatomy and fieldwork as his is an excellent fieldman, knowing perfectly how to look for fossils and excavate and bring them to the lab to be studied. My time with him in Portugal was just amazing, not only because I was doing a PhD project on theropod dinosaurs (which I was passionate about) in a lovely city next to the Atlantic ocean, but also because I could go out search for dinosaurs on the cliffs of Lourinhã whenever I wanted. I also had an amazing time in Lourinhã thanks to the friendship I developed with many people at the Museu de Lourinhã (João Russo, João Marinheiro, Emanuel Tschopp, Femke Holwerda and Simão Mateus, among others) so much so that I often nostaligic of the time I had in Portugal.
Ricardo Araújo
Ricardo is a great friend of mine, and we always collaborate in a very efficient way. He helped me to improve my English writing, and kindly thought me how to perform phylogenetic morphometric analysis. Ricardo also gave me the chance to work on theropod embryos from the Lourinhã Formation, and it was logical for me to include him in a couple of projects on theropods, which resulted in multiple papers.
Eric Buffetaut
As a child, I was reading the books of famous French paleontologist Eric Buffetaut. The latter became my supervisor while I was doing an MSc in Geology at the University of Liège in 2005-2006. He proposed me to work on some cranial bones belonging to Spinosauridae when I was open on working on anything else. I will never thank him enough for giving me this wonderful opportunity of studying theropod dinosaurs, leading me to put a foot in this field at an early age. Eric and I are about to publish the result of this research project, and I wish I will still be working with this excellent paleontologist in the future.
PhD students
Carlos Alberto Hernández-Luna
2021 - 2025 Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
Carlos has recently started a PhD thesis on the dental anatomy, evolution and ontogeny in tyrannosauroid dinosaurs ("Anatomía, ontogenia y evolución de la dentición de los tiranosaurios (Dinosauria: Tyrannosauroidea)") at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo of Morelia (Michoacán), Mexico. Carlos worked on isolated theropod teeth from Mexico during his Master and this PhD project is, therefore, a nice continuation of his MSc thesis. His PhD project aims to investigate aspects of the evolution of tyrannosauroid theropods by analysing in detail the anatomy, ontogeny and evolution of the tyrannosauroid dentition. Cladistic, morphometrical and multivariate analyses based on the morphology and morphometry of tyrannosauroid teeth will form the basis of this study. The results will allow investigation on the major trends in the dental evolution of tyrannosauroid theropods and interpretation of changes in dental anatomy from biological, biomechanical and paleoenvironmental perspectives.
Tutor: Dr. Alejandro Hiram Marín-Leyva
Co-Tutor: Dr. Christophe Hendrickx
External advisor: Dr. Thomas Carr
Nathan Enriquez
2020 - 2023 University of New England
Nathan is an Australian PhD student working on “The structure and composition of fossilised dinosaur skin: Implications for dinosaur palaeobiology and evolution” at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia. His PhD project aims to investigate the diversity and microstructure of dinosaur skin, especially hadrosaurids. Nathan is an extremely passionate student who has already published two papers on theropod tracks from the Wapiti Formation of Alberta, Canada, during his MSc. I predict Nathan a great future as a palaeontologist based on the interaction I had with him.
Principal Supervisor: Dr Phil Bell
Co-Supervisor: Dr Nicolas Campione and Dr Christophe Hendrickx
My wife
Of course, I would not be the palaeontologist I am today without the support of my wife Graciela. She not only had to support our long-distance relationship when I was doing a PhD and a postdoc in Portugal and South Africa, respectively, but she also accepted to live in San Miguel de Tucumán, her hometown, for a couple of years while she always wanted to move to Europe. As an English teacher, she also reviewed the English of many of my papers, therefore improving the quality of them. But more importantly, she offered me two beautiful children to which several of my publications are dedicated.