I am a vertebrate palaeontologist, working as Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Paleontology and Research Council of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. I am the PI of the Evolutionary Paleontology Research group. My interests in paleontology, paleoecology and the history of the Earth, as well as nature in general, are broad. I think paleontological research is very important these days. Understanding the history of interactions between the geosphere, climate and the biosphere throughout the Earth’s history are important for understanding the current state of the world and the effect of human activities on climate change and biodiversity loss. In my research I have concentrated on studying the fossil record of large herbivorous mammals, especially dietary variation, dental functional traits and body size in fossil mammal communities and their changes in response to past climatic and environmental changes during the last ca. 66 million years, since the last mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous. I also study new fossil finds of large mammals from various parts of the world, including proboscideans from the Miocene of Turkiye and East Africa, rhinoceroses and suids from the Miocene of East Africa, and various herbivorous mammal fossils from the Miocene and Pliocene of Mongolia and the Early Pleistocene of Spain.
Room C114 (Physicum)
I’m a vertebrate palaeontologist working on the application of ecometrics to the large herbivorous mammals of South America. Because of its unique taxonomic composition of its mammal faunas, trait distributions in South American herbivore communities tend to be very different from modern communities and those of fossil assemblages in other continents. My PhD work under the NEPA-project is developing universal traits like mesowear angles and body mass ecometrics for South American taxa, to reconstruct palaeoenvironments and further test environmental hypotheses in the context of immigration, diversification and extinction of ungulate, rodent and xenarthran taxa.
Room C108 (Physicum)
I am a Doctoral researcher and paleontologist in the Department of Geosciences and Geography at the University of Helsinki, also affiliated with the Department of Earth sciences at the National Museums of Kenya. I have additional background in education. My interests are broad, focusing on evolution, systematics, paleoecology, taxonomy, and morphological adaptation of proboscideans. My current research is about proboscidean postcranial morphometrics and ecomorphology and their utility in reconstructing past environments.
Understanding of postcranial differences in morphology and morphometrics is lacking. This information is critical for understanding how proboscidean limbs and postcranial skeleton reflect adaptation to moving and feeding in different environmental conditions (e.g. closed forests vs open grasslands and savannas).
Furthermore, I’m describing a very important complete skeleton attributed to Elephas recki atavus from Koobi Fora at Area 123. Studying this skeleton is of key importance in understanding the postcranial morphology of this ecologically important and common elephant during the Early Pleistocene in Africa, and early members of derived modern elephant lineages.
Room: C115 (Physicum)
I completed degrees in palaeontology at the University of Bristol at undergraduate and PhD levels. During which I specialised in the evolution and fossil history of proboscideans – the group that contains elephants and their extinct cousins such as mammoths, mastodonts, stegodonts and deinotheres. My further research interests include evolutionary responses of large mammal communities to past shocks to the Earth’s climate. Eager to share these stories with a broader audience, I have conducted palaeontological outreach activities in museums and consulted for several television documentaries.
In sum, my research strives to answer why we have only three species of elephants on Earth today but over 100 species of antelopes, as for much of the past 15 million years outsized mammalian herbivores such as proboscideans, rhinos and giraffes were far more diverse and widespread across the Earth's ecosystems than today. This begs a more fundamental question about the extent to which the biosphere's baseline conditions underwent dramatic upheaval in recent geological history, including the probable role played by the evolutionary development of humans in this process. Complementing my long-term work in reconstructing the evolutionary trajectories of large mammal species and the ecological communities they inhabited, my role as a postdoc under the NEPA project hosted by Prof. Juha Saarinen includes an investigation of postcranial osteology in equines and rhinos, to understand how the evolution of their limb bone proportions reflected adaptations to different habitats over the past 15 million years.
Room B127 (Physicum)