Conference Title : Africa's Age of Dinosaurs 

With a special screening of the episode ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’

One of the fastest rising paleontologists on the international scene today, Pr. Nizar Ibrahim scours the Sahara Desert of North Africa for clues to life in the Cretaceous period — a thriving prehistoric era known as the last stage of the “Age of the Dinosaurs”. His achievements during his career have included unearthing many dinosaur bones and fossil footprints, as well as discovering a new species of prehistoric flying reptile that is known to have had a 20-foot wingspan while living 95 million years ago. His team also uncovered remains of giant prehistoric fishes, crocodile-like hunters, and turtles.

Nizar is a paleontologist, comparative anatomist, TED Fellow, and National Geographic Explorer who sums up his pursuits into the prehistoric world of the Sahara this way: “Paleontology is like detective work. It’s amazing to piece together clues and re-create a hundred-million-year-old landscape where gigantic predators flourished and enormous evolutionary changes unfolded.”

In his work, he led several expeditions to Morocco and has also taken part in fieldwork in Niger, the UK, France, and Spain. His investigation into North African fossil assemblages is particularly important because northern Africa and the mid-Cretaceous period are underexplored and underrepresented in paleontology.

Nizar currently serves as Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Detroit Mercy (USA), where he teaches Evolution, Human Anatomy, and Comparative Anatomy. He earned his Ph.D. from the School of Medicine and Medical Science at University College Dublin (Republic of Ireland) and his Bachelors of Science degree in Geology and Biology from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Additionally, he has received worldwide media attention, including being covered by such news outlets as the BBC, National Geographic, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fox News, CNN, Sky News, ABC News and many others. The discovery of new remains of the giant predatory dinosaur Spinosaurus was included in Discover Magazine’s “Top 100 Science Stories of 2014”. He was also one of the principal scientific advisors for the landmark BBC series “Planet Dinosaur” and the principal advisor for the NOVA/National Geograhic special “Bigger than T.rex”.

Conference Title : Decoding the Past: An Egyptian Journey of Discovery and Impact  

Hesham Sallam is an Egyptian professor at both the School of Sciences and Engineering, The American University in Cairo (AUC) and at the Department of Geology, Mansoura University, Egypt. He founded the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology (MUVP) Center in 2010. Sallam received his bachelor's degree from the Department of Geology at Mansoura University in 1997 and earned his doctorate degree at the University of Oxford (UK) in 2010. He was promoted to the position of full Professor in 2022 to become the country’s first Egyptian professor of vertebrate paleontology. Sallam was recognized for his research and leadership when he was selected as the Middle East-North Africa recipient of the Science and Sustainability Award by the British Council’s Study UK Alumni committee (2021-2022). 

Sallam was named 2019’s Figure of the Year at Mansoura University in recognition of his scientific achievements. Sallam is also an appointed member of the National Committee for Geological Sciences and at the Egyptian Young Academy for Sciences, which belongs to the Egyptian Academy of Sciences and Technology. In 2022, he was appointed to the Council of Egyptian Culture and Knowledge by the Egyptian Minister of Higher Education. Sallam’s scientific research has been published in numerous high-profile academic journals, including Nature Communications, Nature Communications Biology, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, PLoS ONE, PeerJ, and Geology. 

Conference Title : The fossil tetrapods from the Argana Basin (High-Atlas, Morocco), unique heritage to better understand the impact of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction on Pangaean faunas

Jean-Sébastian Steyer Passionate about paleontology from a young age, Jean-Sébastien Steyer studied geology and biology at the Universities of Grenoble and Dijon. After a DEA at the University of Montpellier (1996) and a civil service, he obtained a PhD in paleontology at the MNHN (2001), rewarded by the Van Straelen Prize of the Geological Society of France. In 2001 and 2002, he was a temporary teaching and research associate in Lille and Poitiers, then a postdoctoral researcher at Charles University in Prague and at the Czech Academy of Sciences, with a Marie Curie European scholarship. He became a CNRS Research Fellow in 2003, then authorized to direct research in 2017.

Steyer is a specialist in the evolution of fauna before the dinosaurs, he is known for his discoveries in the Permian and Triassic of Africa as well as for his books and conferences on paleontology and science in science fiction.

He teaches or has taught at the École nationale supérieure de géologie, the École normale supérieure de Lyon and at the universities of Montpellier, Paris, Lille, Poitiers and Lisbon.

Involved in popularizing science, Jean-Sébastien Steyer is a columnist for the magazines Pour La Science, Espèces, and Bifrost. A former freelancer for Charlie Hebdo, he participates in numerous events, exhibitions and scientific documentaries. He is also part of the Sanctuary team whose goal is to send artistic and scientific messages to the Moon.

In 2020, he supported the scientific video library Ideas in Science in a video for its crowdfunding.

Conference Title : In the footsteps of Northwest African vertebrates through time  

Pr. Jalil specializes in fossil reptiles. His research focuses on documenting palaeobiodiversity and understanding its evolution at the Palaeozoic-Mesozoic transition and during the Mesozoic. In addition to his work at the NMNH, his work remains fundamentally focused on the preservation and promotion of Moroccan paleontological heritage (building and managing paleontological collections in Morocco, training young researchers, and collaborating on museum projects in Morocco).

Pr. Lagnaoui got his PhD. in 2014, worked as Researcher at Kazan Federal University (Russia, 2014-2020) and National University of La Pampa (Argentina, 2018-2019). Since 2020, he is an Associate Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Hassan First University, researching on extinct organism’s behaviour evolution through time. Author of more than 60 scientific papers on vertebrate palaeontology, ichnology, and geoheritage, including discoveries of new taxa from Africa, Europe and South America.