Palaentological research

Research themes

Collections-based projects include Baltoscandian Ediacaran - Cambrian biostratigraphy, Ordovician marine ecosystems, Early Triassic tetrapods from the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago, biomolecule and soft tissue preservation in Jurassic marine reptiles, historical Chinese dinosaur specimens from the Sino-Swedish expeditions, Cretaceous vertebrates from Skåne and Holocene megafauna from Madagascar. Our research focus is Polar Palaeontology, which aims to investigate high latitude biotas and bioevents over the last 600 million years.

Our researchers

Staff at the Palaeontology Section at the Museum of Evolution are engaged in research and collections development. Contributions to university teaching include postdoctoral and postgraduate supervision. We also teach through public outreach, schools and media-based promotion of science.

• Jan Ove R. Ebbestad
• Anette Högström
• Vivianne Berg-Madsen
• Alexander Gubanov

Selected research projects

Scandinavia’s oldest complex ecosystems

The geology of the Digermulen Peninsula of Finnmark in Arctic Norway is unique. Nearly 3000 m of sediments are preserved, spanning more than 300 million years from the Cryogenian to the Early Ordovician. This is as well the only place in Scandinavia where the important Ediacaran-Cambrian transition can be studied. The Digermulen Early Life Research Group, led by Tromsø University Museum in Norway, has for a number of years explored the area, with the aim to understand the transition and development in complexity of ancient ecosystems made up of simple single celled eukaryotes to the rise of bioturbators and their impact on sediments. An important aspect is the diversification and evolution of organic walled microfossils, which are preserved from Ediacaran glacial sediments through to the lower Cambrian. We are also studying the transition between the late Ediacaran biota to the bilaterian fauna of the earliest Cambrian, represented by a divers trace fossil assemblage. On the Digermulen Peninsula we also investigate the diversity lower Cambrian assemblages of organisms with a mineralized skeleton. An important general tool is petrology with focus on provenance, geochemical evolution, and environmental changes, and how these correlated with biotic evolution.

Museum project coordinator: Jan Ove R. Ebbestad

The Cambrian of Norden

Cambrian sediments are widespread in Scandinavia and fairly fossiliferous. Most of the biostratigraphy is based on trilobites, but much work remains in order to understand the development of faunal assemblages coupled with the marked facies changes through the Cambrian. Furthermore, both documentation of diversity and correlation across Baltoscandia can be improved. The ongoing research spans mostly the lower and middle Cambrian and is based on several new collections as well as existing type and general collections in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish museums.

Museum project coordinators: Jan Ove R. Ebbestad, Alexander Gubanov and Vivianne Berg-Madsen

The Boda biota

The Late Ordovician (Katian) Boda Limestone are huge carbonate mud mounds that developed over a period of ca. 3 million years. Their growth started just after the transgressive facies of the Fjäcka Shale and ceased with the global glacial drop down in the Hirnantian. The mounds can reach a size of 800 m in width and be 200 m thick, and have been exploited and quarried actively since the 1930s. Fossils in the Boda mounds are almost exclusively found in fissure infillings. As the mounds grew, a radial set of fissures developed, opening mechanically, and organic remains accumulated in these fissures. The fissures are usually filled with remains of trilobites, and usually only one dominant species. Some fissures contain literally thousands upon thousands of trilobite sclerites. In among the trilobite remains other fossils can be found. The research focuses on collecting and documenting the mound fauna, with particular focus on the molluscs. The aim is to understand the ecology and evolution of the unique mound fauna in the time leading up to the end Ordovician mass extinction.

Museum project coordinators: Jan Ove R. Ebbestad and Alexander Gubanov

Lost records - Cambrian-Silurian erratics from the Bothnian sea

The development of the nearshore marine areas in the eastern part of the Baltic platform during the Cambrian to Silurian is poorly understood, simply because all the rock record is gone, removed through erosion. The biological and geological story of this part of the platform during one of the most intense evolutionary times in Earth history, including the second largest mass extinction, is therefore seemingly vanished and inaccessible. But the lost record can still be found in numerous erratics in eastern Sweden, Åland, and Finland, transported during the last ice age from the bottom of the Bothnian sea where Palaeozoic rock are preserved. Study of museum collection, as well as new sampling, will enable us to piece the story together, recreating the lost record, and allow assessment of the biodiversity, assemblages and geological history of the shallower and proximal parts of the marine Baltic platform.

Museum project coordinator: Jan Ove R. Ebbestad