Publications -
R.L. Surprenant & M.L. Droser (in press). Growth processes of the highly abundant Ediacaran tubular organism Funisia dorothea: Journal of Paleontology.
R.L. Surprenant & M.L. Droser. 2024 New insight into the global record of the Ediacaran tubular morphotype: A common solution to early multicellularity: Royal Society Open Science, v. 11, 231313, Doi: 10.1098/rsos.231313.
S.P. Jonnalagedda, R.L. Surprenant, M.L. Droser, B. Bhanu. 2024. Searching for Life: End-to-end Automated Detection and Characterization of Ediacaran Biosignatures: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, v. 62, Doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3367632.
R.L. Surprenant, J.G. Gehling, E.B. Hughes, M.L. Droser, 2024. Reply to “Comment on ‘Biostratinomy of the
enigmatic tubular organism Aulozoon soliorum and related paleobiological and paleoecological insights’, Surprenant et al., Gondwana Research, v. 122, p. 138-162”. Gondwana Research, v. 122, p. 138-162.
R.L. Surprenant, J.G. Gehling, E.B. Hughes, M.L. Droser, 2023. Biostratinomy of the enigmatic tubular organism
Aulozoon soliorum and related paleobiological and paleoecological insights: Gondwana Research, v. 122, p. 138-162. Doi: 10.1016/j.gr.2023.06.010.
M.L. Droser, H. McCandless, I.V. Hughes, C. Murdoch, J. Murdoch, P.C. Boan, R.L. Surprenant, 2022. Bringing
the world-famous half billion year old fossils of the Ediacara Biota to South Australian students: In the classroom and in the field: South Australian Science Teachers Association: South Australia Science Teachers Association, p. 10-14. https://indd.adobe.com/view/7966dd52-8f69-4c9d-86bf-d2343ac52342.
S.D. Evans, C. Tu, A. Rizzo, R.L. Surprenant, P.C. Boan, H. McCandless, N. Marshall, S. Xiao, M.L. Droser,
2022. Environmental drivers of the first major animal extinction across the Ediacaran White Sea-Nama transition: PNAS, v. 119. Doi: 10.1073/pnas.2207475199.
M.L. Droser, S.D. Evans, L.G. Tarhan, R.L. Surprenant, E. Hughes, I. Hughes, J.G. Gehling. 2022. What
happens between depositional events, stays between depositional events: The significance of organic mat surfaces in the capture of Ediacara communities and the sedimentary rocks that preserve them: Frontiers in Earth Sciences, v.10. Doi: 10.3389/feart.2022.826353.
S.P. Jonnalagedda, R.L. Surprenant, M.L. Droser, B. Bhanu, 2021. SPACESeg: Automated Detection of
Bed Junction Morphologies Indicating Signs of Life in Ediacaran Period: Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.
R.L. Surprenant, J.G. Gehling, M.L. Droser. 2020. Biological and ecological insights from the preservational
variability of Funisia dorothea, Ediacara Member, South Australia: PALAIOS, v.35, p. 359-376. Doi: 10.2110/palo.2020.014.
M.L. Droser, L.G. Tarhan, S.E. Evans, R.L. Surprenant, J.G. Gehling. 2020. Biostratinomy of the Ediacara
Member (Rawnsley Quartzite, South Australia): Implications for depositional environments, ecology, and biology of Ediacara organisms: Interface Focus, v. 10. Doi: 10.1098/rsfs.2019.0100.
Invited Talks –
2024 The Ediacaran tubular morphogroup: problems, patterns, and solutions
University of Southern California – Speaker for the paleontology and environment seminar
2023 The Age of Dinosaurs
University of California Riverside – Guest lecturer for Headlines in the History of Life
2022 Navigating Graduate School Applications
Macalester College – Professional Development Seminar
2021 The Garden of Ediacara: An Introduction to the First Complex Animals on Earth
Macalester College – Guest lecturer for History and Evolution of the Earth
2020 Paleontology and taphonomy of the Nilpena Station National Heritage Ediacara Fossil Site, South Australia
Macalester College – Guest lecturer for Invertebrate Paleontology
2020 Introduction to the Ediacara Biota
University of California Riverside – Guest lecturer for Headlines in the History of Life
Abstracts Linked to Conference Presentations–
2023 Oral Ontogeny of the Ediacaran tubular organism Funisia dorothea, Nilpena Ediacara National Park, South Australia
Geological Society of America Connects
2023 Poster New insight into the global record of the Ediacaran tubular morphotype: A common solution to early multicellularity
Geological Society of America Connects
2023 Oral Exploring the nature and implications of organic matground-mediated sedimentology in the Ediacaran Period and beyond
Astrobiology Graduate Conference
2023 Oral Mind the Gap: Leveraging biostratinomic variability to refine the records of Ediacaran tubular
organisms and morphologically convergent structures
Palaeo Down Under 3
2023 Oral Ediacaran test tubes: Constraining the taxonomy of Ediacaran nonmineralized tubular taxa to elucidate Earth’s
earliest experiments in multicellularity
The Desert Symposium Proceedings: Mines of the Mojave
2022 Oral The ecosystems to be engineered: Setting a baseline for the nature of substrates in the Precambrian to constrain the impact of the agronomic revolution
Geological Society of America Connects
2022 Poster Remote Detection and Description of a Definitive Biosignature from the Ediacara Member, South Australia (~550 Ma) to Inform the Search for Macroscopic, Biogenic Sedimentary Structures on Mars
Astrobiology Science Conference
2021 Oral Utilizing Ediacaran tubular organisms to identify mechanisms of success at the dawn of animal life
Astrobiology Graduate Conference.
2020 Oral Defining the preservational variability of Funisia dorothea and related insights on morphology from the Ediacara Member of South Australia
The Palaeontological Association Annual Meeting
2020 Oral An unlikely ecosystem engineer: exploring the role of Funisia dorothea as a control on diversity in one of Earth’s earliest complex ecosystems, the Ediacara Member, South Australia
Geological Society of America Connects
2019 Oral Ediacaran test tubes: Earth’s earliest experiments in multicellularity recorded in the morphology and ecology of three tubular taxa from the Ediacara Member, South Australia
Geological Society of America Connects
2019 Oral A Tale of Tube Cities: The role of Funisia dorothea in preserving short-term community succession in Ediacara Assemblages
North American Paleontological Convention
2018 Poster Putting the “fun” in taphonomy: the multifaceted role of Funisia dorothea in the preservation of Ediacaran Ecosystems
Geological Society of America Connects
2018 Poster Taphonomy of a vertebrate microfossil bonebed in the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) Two Medicine Formation of Montana – a comparative approach
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting
Talk at the 2020 Geological Society of America Meeting
Title - An unlikely ecosystem engineer: Exploring the role of Funisia dorothea as a control on diversity in one of Earth's earliest complex ecosystems, the Ediacara Member, South Australia