The taphonomy of a pantodont-rich assemblage from the San Juan Basin, New Mexico, USA

Dr Paige dePolo, Liverpool John Moores University

66 million years ago, an asteroid hit the earth and kicked off the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction. In the wake of this extinction, many weird and enigmatic mammals began radiating into empty niches. One group, the plant eating, herbivorous pantodonts, quickly grew to be the largest mammals yet known in Earth history. In this talk, we’ll look at a collection of fossils from Torreon Wash in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico and think about their taphonomy (what happened to the animals after death). I will then develop an argument for gregariousness within Pantolambda bathmodon (a small pantodont), that illustrates that grouping behaviour is wide-spread within this clade (a grouping that includes a common ancestor and all the descendants of that ancestor).

An artist’s illustration of Pantolambda bathmodon

Paige is a vertebrate palaeontologist and a lecturer in vertebrate biology at Liverpool John Moores University. After completing undergraduate degrees in geology and geological engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, Paige moved to the UK and studied for an MScR in palaeontology and geobiology at the University of Edinburgh. She recently completed her PhD at the same institution. Paige is broadly interested in vertebrates, with work spanning from dinosaur footprints to Triassic marine reptiles to Paleocene mammals and, when she’s not puzzling over fossils, she can be found reading fantasy and sci-fi books or wandering around botanical gardens.

This lecture will be preceded by the society’s AGM.