New Species

My research rarely involves describing new species or working out the evolutionary relationships between them. Still, I have been fortunate to be a part of teams that have discovered and described exciting new lineages of various organisms, from microscopic bacteria and archaea to a giant carnivorous dinosaur.

  • Spinosaurus mirabilis
    • Giant, fish-eating dinosaur
    • Age: Cretaceous
    • Location: Niger
    • Source: Sereno et al. (2026) Science
Art: Dani Navarro
  • Novel microbial community within buried dinosaur bone
    • 46 genomes from six bacterial phyla (Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Nitrospira, Acidobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, Chloroflexi) & one archaeal phylum (Thaumarchaeota), the majority of which represent novel microbial lineages from class to species levels
    • Age: Modern
    • Location: Canada
    • Source: Liang et al. (2020) Environmental Microbiome