Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow
Computational Paleobiology Research Group
Growing up surrounded by fossiliferous outcrops in the Free State, South Africa, I took an interest in geology and palaeontology from an early age. My parents started the Clarens Dinosaur Tours in the early 1990’s and I spent several school holidays guiding tourists and showing them the geological and palaeontological wonders of the Clarens - Golden Gate Valley. After obtaining my BSc (Life Sciences) from the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 2014, I moved to Johannesburg to pursue my BSc Honours (2015), Masters, and ultimately my PhD at the Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI) at the University of the Witwatersrand. My PhD, which I obtained in 2021, focused on the litho- (rocks) and biostratigraphy (fossils) across the middle-to-late Permian contact between the Ecca and Beaufort groups in the north of the main Karoo Basin in South Africa. Following my PhD, I was awarded a GENUS Postdoctoral fellowship to study the Permo-Triassic transition in KwaZulu-Natal Province, for which I was still based at the ESI.
I am currently a Marie Curie Fellow (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101060666). Using a combination of U-Pb geochronology from detrital zircons, sedimentology, and vertebrate body and trace fossils, my project, ExtinctRecov, aims to improve our understanding of how Permo-Triassic faunal communities within the Catalan pyrenees and southern France basins changed through time and to improve their correlation with other basins, especially the main Karoo Basin of South Africa.
My work has been published in international journals (PLOS One, Palaeo3, Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, Journal of African Earth Sciences, Palaeontologia Africana, and Lethaia) and I have presented my research at various national and international conferences (PSSA, IGC, SVP, EAVP, and ICCI).
Contact:
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A complete publication list is available here: www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Groenewald
