Lauren Sallan, PhD
Macroevolutionist | Paleobiologist | Senior TED Fellow
PI, Macroevolution Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
Macroevolution · Biodiversity · Mass Extinction · Fossils · Models · Fishes
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Research Program
I investigate how biological diversity is structured through deep time by combining theory with evidence from fossils, living organisms, and quantitative models. My work focuses on macroevolutionary dynamics—how environmental change, ecological interactions, global events, and key traits drive cycles of ecological filling, disruption, and reorganization rather than steady accumulation of diversity. Using fishes and early vertebrates as model systems, I aim to explain why similar evolutionary and ecological patterns recur across lineages, habitats, and millions of years.
This work provides a deep-time and global perspective on biodiversity change and resilience in the face of environmental challenges, external threats, and emergent opportunities. It also helps explain where we, as descendants of a long line of vertebrate life, came from and where we are going.
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