Lecturers on 1st IMERP-XIV EJIP: Susan Turner

Let us with the presentation of the differents lecturers. Now it is the turn of the second lecturer of te workshop about Paleozoic.

Workshop "Life in Palaeozoic: an overview of land and sea ecosystems" lecturers.

Susan Turner (Geoscience consultant and editor; Honorary Research Fellow at several institutions including Queensland and New Brunswick museums, Curtin and Monash universities) is one of the world authorities on agnathan and chondrichthyan fishes and especially their early evolution, with special interest in thelodonts (Thelodonti), basal sharks (e.g. Doliodus, Protodus, Mcmurdodus), and certain other groups (e.g. gyracanths, xenacanths). She has produced an extensive amount of work in her nearly 50 years of research. Her PhD (begun when in Reading University under Bev Halstead) focused on understanding the British thelodonts then known with special reference to their applied biostratigraphy and palaeogeography (with a first paper on the closure of Iapetus in Nature in 1970) she continued that work worldwide over the years, pioneering Palaeozoic microvertebrate research in Gondwana, collaborating on the Handbook of Paleoichthyology on the clade and is now concerned with the origins as well as palaeobiology. Migrating to Australia in 1980, she began to discover new taxa notably mid-Palaeozoic sharks based on microfossils and this has led, especially with her students and colleagues in international research projects, to finding out more about the evolution of basal agnathans and gnathostomes.  One important work challenged the hypothesis that conodont animals were vertebrates (they are not!). Discovery and recognition of the first Carboniferous tetrapod in the southern hemisphere and the youngest-known dicynodont led to new avenues of research and inclusion as a "Wizard of Oz". Field experience includes work on four continents, with description of fossils from many countries besides. Working always in a museum environment, she created a major geology gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne and assisted in the re-structuring of the Queensland Museum. She co-ran UNESCO:IUGS IGCP 328 and was a member of the Paleobiological Fund, the IGCP Board and Global Geoparks Expert Committee (helping to create the Australian Geopark Kanawinka and assessing ones in China and Iran), and is on the current Australian IGCP Committee.