Diego Garcia-bellido

Biography

My main interest is the taxonomical diversity and functional morphology of the early metazoans generated during the so-called Cambrian "explosion" (some 540 million years ago), and the phylogenetic relationships among the major animal groups (phyla) that appeared with this unique event in the history of the biosphere. I got my Graduate Degree in Biology-Zoology (1995) and a Postgraduate Degree in Palaeontology (1997) from the Complutense University in Madrid. My first contact with Burgess Shale-type fossils was in the summer of 1994, when I visited the University of Cambridge, studying soft-bodied (non-mineralized) fossils from the Lower Cambrian Kinzers Formation of Pennsylvania with Prof. Conway Morris and early Cambrian organic-walled microfossils from northwestern Canada with Prof. Butterfield. During the summers of 1995, 1997 and 2000 I excavated at the Burgess Shale (British Columbia) with the Royal Ontario Museum-Toronto, under the direction of Dr. Collins. In parallel with my research on soft-bodied fossils, and due to the scarcity of such type of fossils in Spain, I took a different topic for my PhD Thesis: the Palaeozoic Porifera from the Iberian Peninsula (Madrid, 2002). I did a two-year postdoc at the ROM (2003-2004), working with Dr. Collins on some of the Burgess Shale's most emblematic arthropod fossils (Marrella, Leanchoilia, Isoxys...). Upon my return to Madrid (2005) I headed a research project for the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) to search for Ediacaran, Burgess Shale and Orsten-type fossils in Spain, and study their palaeogeographic implications. My latest work comes from collaborations with the South Australian Museum in excavating and studying the early Cambrian Emu Bay Shale Lagerstätte in Kangaroo Island (South Australia), having joined The University of Adelaide in January 2013 as a Senior Research Fellow. In late 2013 I became an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, with a 4-year research project entitled "Testing our knowledge on the dawn of Animal life: evidence from the fossil record against modern ecological and morphological analogues". It focuses on comparing the Ediacara biota and the Emu Bay Shale and other Cambrian lagerstätten from a palaeocological perspective, and includes experiments on Modern marine invertebrate predation to test against what we observe in the fossil record.

Research Interest

Medicine,Medical Education,Research,etc