About Me

I'm a Dutch vertebrate palaeontologist studying the diversity of life in deep time.I am particularly interested in Triassic reptiles and their evolutionary radiation following the devastating Permo-Triassic mass extinction. This crucial period in reptile evolution allows me and my colleagues to investigate the origin of several major reptile groups, to understand completely unique body plans in long extinct reptiles, to reconstruct long gone habitats, and to investigate the impact of mass extinctions. In particular, I am interested in morphological innovations that are fundamental to the evolutionary success of major clades, such as the origin of complex skin appendages in reptiles and the formation of the turtle shell.

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I recently started my own research group, funded by the DFG Emmy Noether programme, which focuses on one of the major outstanding mysteries in vertebrate systematics: the evolutionary origin of turtles. This project revolves around a detailed re-evaluation of Triassic stem-turtles that brings together aspects of micro-computed tomography (µCT) assisted comparative anatomy, ontogeny, histology, phylogeny, and biomechanics, with the ultimate aim of resolving the phylogenetic position of turtles among reptiles and elucidating the nature and mode of turtle body plan evolution.

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I started my career as a Biology student at Leiden University in my native Netherlands. From there I went on to do research projects at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden with Prof. Dr. Anne Schulp to work on the famous Mongolian dinosaur Protoceratops and at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin with PD Dr. Ingmar Werneburg to work on marsupial cranial development.

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I conducted my PhD research at the University of Zurich under the supervision of PD Dr. Torsten Scheyer, studying the phylogeny and palaeobiology of “Protorosauria”, a group of enigmatic Permo-Triassic stem-archosaurs, which includes the wonderfully weird long-necked Tanystropheus.

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My first postdoctoral position was as an SNF-funded Research Fellow at The Natural History Museum in London, where I studied Late Triassic archosaurs from the UK, working with Dr. Susie Maidment and Prof. Dr. Richard Butler. This research is being funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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Most recently, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Stuttgart State Museum for Natural History where my reseach focused on the crested 'wonder reptile' Mirasaura grauvogeli from the Buntsandstein (early Middle Triassic) of Alsace, France, with Prof. Dr. Rainer Schoch. For this project I applied synchrotron radiation and SEM imaging, among other methods, to investigate these fossils, which preserve very rare soft-tissue preservation.

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I have conducted palaeontological fieldwork in seven different countries (the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, UK, Poland, Morocco, and South Africa), and through my research I have visited collections around the world.