Category: Interview

Elsa Panciroli is a palaeontologist who studies the evolution and ecology of extinct animals – particularly mammals from the time of dinosaurs. She is a researcher based at the University of Oxford and an associate researcher at the National Museum of Scotland. A keen science communicator, she has contributed to The Guardian, Palaeontology Online and Biological Sciences Review, and co-hosts the Palaeocast podcast. Beasts Before Us is her first book and tells the amazing story of early mammal evolution, taking the reader back well before the dinosaurs even rose to prominence. Leading up to publication, we reached out to Elsa and asked her some questions.

You write that you started your palaeontology career interested in dinosaurs and Ice Age megafauna. What turned you on to the path of our mammal ancestors?

Like so many things in life, it was serendipity. During my masters degree the renowned mammal palaeontologist, Prof Christine Janis, moved back to the UK from the US. I’d recently read her paper on giant extinct kangaroos and I was excited to meet her and learn more. It turned out she was offering a project studying mammal ankle bones, so although there were dinosaur projects available, I jumped at the chance to work with Christine. I learned so much from her, she was (and still is) a brilliant mentor. I soon realised what a lot of questions were still to be answered about extinct mammals. Afterwards, I did my PhD on little-known Jurassic mammals from Scotland, and started exploring their even more ancient past – I just couldn’t believe what I discovered! That’s why I wanted to write the book, to share what I had learned.

Given that we are so biased to mammals where, for example, conservation is concerned, why do you think that there has been so little mainstream interest in early mammal evolution? Your book shows that there is a fascinating story playing out before dinosaurs even evolved. Do the dinosaurs in that sense enjoy the advantage of incumbency in our imagination? Or do the details of mammal evolution not easily lend themselves to telling a captivating story?

I disagree that mammal evolution doesn’t lend itself to story-telling, but the many authors who’ve tackled the subject up to now focused on recent evolution and assumed everything before then wasn’t relevant. I wrote Beasts Before Us because our ancient relatives are incredible! I was quite shocked by this whole plethora of animals that not only predate the dinosaurs, but were incredibly successful, bizarre and exciting. They were the first to evolve iconic features we are fascinated by today, like large body size, sabre-teeth and gnarly horns. It’s just the icing on the cake that they are actually related to us. I wanted to show people the history of mammals isn’t a story of waiting in the wings for the dinosaurs to disappear, but of the stunning success our lineage (synapsids) over the last 350 million years, including before dinosaurs even existed.

I think there are a few different reasons why early mammal evolution doesn’t get the same love as dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are kind of otherworldly – in fact you might argue they are almost mythical – so naturally this makes them extremely compelling. As a result, people forget to look beyond them at what else has happened in evolutionary history. The media don’t help, because they overly focus on dinosaurs and always plaster them centre stage. Dinosaurs have become a touchstone for ancient, and other discoveries are always placed in relation to them. There is a lot of dino-noise to get through if you want to tell the stories of other animal groups!

An important theme in your book is that evolution is not a march of progress but a process of adaptation to current circumstances. It seems that our early ancestors thoroughly explored the space of possibilities and pioneered both behaviours (e.g. digging underground burrows) and morphology (e.g. sabre-toothed therapsids) that would later evolve again independently through convergent evolution. Are there examples of morphological adaptations or suspected behaviours in early mammals that have not reoccurred in more recent mammal evolution?

That’s a really interesting question! As we make new fossil discoveries, it’s increasingly apparent that there is very little happening on Earth today that hasn’t been done multiple times before by other animals. Of the top of my head, I can’t think of anything they – or other animals – did in the past that hasn’t reappeared again, nature is just like that. If anyone can think of something they can always tweet me about it!

I thought one very interesting idea you mention concerns the adaptive radiation of therians, i.e. the group that gave rise to both marsupials and the placental mammals to which we belong. They remained a species-poor group until after the dinosaurs went extinct, and it is traditionally thought it was competition from the dinosaurs that held them back. Instead, here, and in the Current Biology paper that just been published (congratulations, by the way), you argue that it was competition from other mammaliaform groups that held back the therians. Can you give us the elevator pitch in support of this idea?

Part of the problem is that the fossil record can be very misleading, and we can’t easily separate cause and effect. People saw that mammals became larger when non-bird dinosaurs disappeared, and so they drew a causal line between the two. To tackle this issue more robustly, my co-authors and I compiled big datasets of the changes taking place in the skeletons and teeth of mammals from the time of dinosaurs, and just afterwards. Our results showed that in the earlier-branching groups of mammals the number of changes taking place in their bodies continued to rise – in other words, they were still splitting into new groups and evolving new specialisations. But for the therian mammals (which include the ancestors and relatives of all modern mammals except platypuses and echidna), the number of changes was pretty flat in the time of dinosaurs. That is, until the disappearance of the earlier mammal groups – some of which didn’t become extinct until after the non-bird dinosaurs. Crucially, it wasn’t until these later extinctions that we really see therians diversifying more widely, therefore showing that it was competition with the other mammals that had been preventing them from diversifying prior to that point.

You mention Clashach quarry in Scotland as a site of great scientific interest due to its record of fossil footprints. I often shudder to think how many body and trace fossils are destroyed forever during mining and construction activities. Do you generally find commercial operators willing or interested to cease or move activities when fossils are found? Or would most rather just quietly ignore them to prevent costly delays?

Although you’re right that fossils are destroyed during extraction, we can’t forget that most fossils wouldn’t have been discovered in the first place if it wasn’t for quarrying and mining! The ties between extractive industries and palaeontology are really important, but they also form part of the colonialist history of the discipline, which we must acknowledge. The attitude of extraction companies varies from place to place, but many are really keen to support scientific study as much as they can. For example I know several have welcomed info sheets and talks from experts on how to recognise fossils, so that the workers know what to look out for. They’ll often put aside potential fossil finds so that they can be examined and studied. It’s hard to find a balance between industry and conservation, but for the most part quarry workers are just as excited about fossils as everyone else!

In your book, you broach the sensitive issue of decolonisation, acknowledging the often dark and unsavoury history of our scientific disciplines. Beyond words, what actions do you think are necessary to get to terms with our past? For example, is the repatriation of museum specimens always the preferred option?

Decolonising science and museum collections is a complex subject, and I’m not an expert, but the first step for all of us is to listen: we need to hear about, understand, and explore the legacy of colonialism and empire on our lives, not dismiss it. Repatriation of objects is appropriate in some cases, but there are many other things that need to happen as well. For example many objects are completely separated from their context – where they came from, the circumstances of their collection, and who collected them. We need to ask ourselves what the purpose of collections actually is now, who they are for? The scientific system itself was built in such a way that it biases who carries out research, how we carry it out, how it’s published, and who benefits. It’s going to take time and thought to rebuild it to be more equitable.

I was very impressed with the visual language you use throughout this book and read that you have a keen interest in science communication. I am a regular listener of the Palaeocast podcast that you co-host, but beyond that, what other platforms and outlets do you contribute to?

I have to admit I don’t keep a regular online presence at the moment, except for my twitter feed! I used to blog, but as I’ve ended up writing more articles (I wrote for The Guardian for a while, and some other freelance work) I’ve had less time. However, when possible I place content on my YouTube channel, particularly short videos explaining new research, or talking about fossils. I’ve also done some readings of Beasts Before Us, if you want a wee taster!

Beasts Before Us is your first book. Now that it has been published, is it time to turn your attention back to research, or was the experience rewarding enough that we can look forward to more books in the future?

I’ve actually been carrying out my research alongside writing, which has been pretty exhausting! It’ll be nice to devote more attention just to the research for a while. Having said that, I do have a second book lined up, and many more ideas in the queue, so you can definitely expect more in the future!

Beasts Before Us: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution
By: Elsa Panciroli

All prices correct at the time of this article’s publication.

Dean R. Lomax is an internationally recognized palaeontologist, author, television presenter, and science communicator. He is currently a visiting scientist at the University of Manchester and is a leading authority on ichthyosaurs. He is due to publish a remarkable popular science book, Locked in Time, that looks at what the fossil record can tell us about behaviours of extinct animals by way of fifty remarkable examples. Leading up to publication, we reached out to Dean and asked him some questions.

Could you tell us a little about your background and where the motivation for this book came from?

My passion for palaeontology stems from my childhood fascination with everything dinosaur. In high school, I was not very gifted academically and my grades were not good enough to attend university so at the age of 18 I ended up selling my possessions – including my cherished Star Wars collection(!) – to help fund a trip to excavate dinosaurs at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in the USA. That trip changed my life and formed the backbone of my career. Not only did it provide me with the necessary experience I needed to help build a career in palaeontology, but it is where the idea for Locked in Time originated. Whilst looking at the museum displays, one particularly outstanding fossil caught my eye. A trackway with its maker preserved at the very end – an animal that had literally been caught dead in its tracks. I had never seen anything like this fossil before, in books, in museums or in documentaries. This prehistoric story was preserved in time for all to see. I was hooked. It gave me that spark to discover more about prehistoric animals and their behaviours and I even ended up describing this particular fossil in the scientific literature.

In your introduction, you mention the field of palaeoethology (the study of fossils to infer behaviour). How big of a subfield is this in palaeontology? Are there specialised palaeoethologists, or is it more a case of palaeontologists contributing to this field whenever someone finds something?

Palaeoethology is a fascinating subject that allows us to explore the study of behaviours of extinct species through the evidence preserved in fossils. It is a small subfield of palaeontology, due mostly to the rarity of fossils with direct and reliable evidence of behaviours preserved. There aren’t necessarily any specialised palaeoethologists, but rather those palaeontologists who contribute to the field when something is found and described; however, palaeontologists may often be entirely unaware that they are actively contributing to the field because the idea of ethology/behaviour in the fossil record can easily be overlooked. Having said that, there are some palaeontologists that could easily add ‘palaeoethologist’ to their CVs, most notably those who work with amber which often preserve snapshots of behaviours in action. A real pioneer in the field of palaeoethology was Dr Arthur Boucot. He spent years searching for evidence of behaviours in prehistoric animals, writing numerous papers and academic monographs, and even introduced the term “frozen behaviour” for those instances where an extinct organism was preserved in the midst of some type of behaviour. Delving into his history and research was genuinely inspiring. As I have researched and published on multiple specimens and have written this book, I guess this probably qualifies me as a palaeoethologist too.

Ideas about behaviour are important to those who produce artwork depicting prehistoric lifeforms, i.e. palaeoartists. Do you find there is much of an exchange between palaeontologists and palaeoartists to try and depict behaviour in artwork according to the latest science?

The field of palaeoart has grown immensely over the last twenty years. In fact, several palaeoartists have become excellent scientists in their own right, including Bob Nicholls (the artist for this book), who has co-authored multiple scientific studies. Good palaeoartists stay informed of the latest scientific research and discoveries, with several often working very closely with palaeontologists to ensure their reconstructions are scientifically accurate. Subsequently, when based on the latest science, thoroughly researched palaeoart reconstructions are anatomically plausible. However, that said, practically all aspects of behaviour depicted in palaeoart are not based on direct evidence but assumptions. Usually, the best a palaeoartist can do is look at an extinct animal’s anatomy and environment and speculate about its lifestyle and behaviours. This is why fossilised evidence of behaviours, like those contained inside this book, are so precious and important to study and understand. These remarkable fossils tell us that prehistoric creatures were not movie monsters (prehistoric life, especially dinosaurs, are too often portrayed as roaring monsters!) but real animals that behaved in a variety of familiar and surprising ways.

What have technological advancements contributed to this line of inquiry? Are palaeontologists going back to old fossil material to reexamine them with new tools and finding new evidence of fossilised behaviour?

The use of flashy, high-tech computers, scanners and the like have helped to unlock an entirely new world of information contained in fossils. As a result, not only are newly discovered fossils subjected to this technology but much older fossil discoveries, where none of these technologies were previously available, can now be reanalysed with a fresh approach, breathing new life into old fossils as it were. This has led to some exciting discoveries of fossilised behaviours in specimens that have otherwise been deemed as having little to no research value.

Whether dinosaurs or early mammals, prehistoric organisms were faced with many of the same basic challenges as animals alive today. Has the fossil record revealed any examples of behaviours that were unique and now effectively extinct?

These types of questions are what get me excited about unravelling the mysteries of prehistoric behaviour. In many cases, “the present is the key to the past”, as geologist Charles Lyell famously introduced in the 1800s, and this definitely holds true with understanding behaviour. For example, on a basic level, we know that some groups of mammals live in herds today and that some extinct mammals also lived in herds millions of years ago (we have good fossil evidence for this). However, the natural world is filled with so many incredible acts of behaviour that you might expect the fossil record would reveal something unique. As such, perhaps one of the most unusual and apparently unique behaviours was recorded in an ancient roughly 430 million-year-old arthropod nicknamed the ‘kite runner’. The young of this arthropod were literally tethered to the parents via long spines. It appears to be the only known occurrence of this type of brooding behaviour known among fossil or living arthropods.

Rather than body fossils, past behaviour is often deduced from so-called trace fossils or ichnofossils. Nests, fossilised footprints, and trackways must be fairly easy to recognize. But what about the harder-to-identify traces? Do palaeontologists frequently encounter suspected ichnofossils where they don’t know who made them, how they were made, or perhaps even what they represent?

Yes, palaeontologists (or palaeoichnologists) frequently encounter mysterious trace fossils that are difficult or near impossible to identify or decipher. By their very definition, trace fossils represent evidence of behaviour, so we can say with confidence that an ancient animal made a nest, left its tracks or created a burrow, but they generally do not provide all of the tell-tale signs that allow us to identify what organism made it, how it was made or even what the trace might really represent. To find definite answers, we have to go a step further. In much rarer circumstances some trace fossils provide more than a ‘simple’ track or burrow and may be directly related with its maker, such that the body fossil is present inside the burrow or at the end of the track. In other examples, a track might show where the animal walked, stopped, sat down and then walked away, or a burrow might preserve evidence of scratch marks that could indicate how the burrow may have been constructed and by whom. These types of fossils provide much more information about specific moments (and behaviours) in deep time.

Were there any examples of fossilised behaviour that did not make the cut for this book but that you would have loved to include, or any noteworthy recent discoveries?

Having spent a substantial amount of time combing through hundreds of scientific papers and books, and examining specimens in museum collections, my initial plan was to tell the story of prehistoric behaviour through 100 fossils, rather than 50. It was incredibly tough selecting 100 fossils, so cutting this in half was much harder! I had to rank each of the fossils against one another, in terms of the type of behaviour, type of animal and so forth. This meant some really unusual specimens, like the aforementioned ‘kite runner’, did not make the final cut. One fossil that I would have really liked to include, and which has received worldwide media attention recently, is the so-called ‘Dueling Dinosaurs’ fossil, which appears to preserve a Tyrannosaurs and Triceratops locked in combat. I opted not to include the specimen as it has yet to be formally described, although I do make some subtle references to it. I’m very excited to see what research is revealed from this fossil, especially as only one fighting dinosaur fossil has been described, which inspired the book’s cover.

Finally, what are some of the biggest unanswered questions when it comes to fossilised behaviour? What would you love to find?

There are so many ancient groups and species that it would be easy for me to rattle off a list of some of the biggest unanswered questions about fossilised behaviour, but the reality is that we have only really scratched the surface. We have so much to learn when it comes to fossilised behaviour. After all, inferring and attempting to understand behaviour in long-extinct organisms is incredibly hard and is made even more challenging when evidence of behaviours are not preserved. It is also vitally important to remember that, by its very nature, the process of fossilisation is already an incredibly rare event, so to have any form of evidence for ancient fossilised behaviour preserved is genuinely astonishing.

Ooh, what would I love to find! I’m torn between several imaginary fossils, but if I was forced to choose one then it would have to be finding a dinosaur dead in its tracks. The thrill of following in the footsteps of a dinosaur only to find its skeleton lying at the very end of the track would be the ultimate dinosaur detective story.

Locked in Time: Animal Behavior Unearthed in 50 Extraordinary Fossils
By: Dean R. Lomax
Hardback | May 2021