4 April 2024

13:30 – 14:15

Amphi 3

Robert Reisz

Robert R. Reisz received his BSc, MSc, and PhD in Zoology and Biology from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. After spending a year at UCLA, he moved to University of Toronto Mississauga in 1975, where he has been a Professor since 1989. He has served as Chair of the Department for two terms, and as Vice-Dean Graduate. At present he holds research associate positions in several major natural history museums in Canada, USA, and South Africa. His research interest is in vertebrate paleontology. Professor Reisz has more than 260 ISI cited journal publications with his students and collaborators internationally, including in Science, Nature, PNAS, Nature Communications. His research has been featured in these journals, as well as in numerous online media, in newspapers, magazines, tv, and radio. He is recipient of numerous honors and awards, including Honorary Membership in the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Fellowships of the AAAS and the Royal Society of Canada, and recipient of the Alexander Von Humboldt Research Award. He is also currently Honorary Tenured Professor at Jilin University, China, where he supervises colleagues and students and has an ongoing research program.

Did hydrocarbons from a distant Oklahoma oil field facilitate preservation of 289 million year old vertebrate skin?

The richest and most diverse assemblage of early terrestrial tetrapods is preserved within the infilled cave system of Richards Spur, Oklahoma (289–286 Mya1). Some of the oldest-known terrestrial amniotes are exquisitely preserved here because of early impregnation and encasement of organic material by oil-seep hydrocarbons within rapidly deposited clay-rich cave sediments under toxic anoxic conditions.This phenomenon has also afforded the preservation of integumentary soft tissues, providing critical first evidence into the anatomical changes marking the transition from the aquatic and semiaquatic lifestyles of anamniotes to the fully terrestrial lifestyles of early amniotes. Chromatographic analysis of extractable hydrocarbons from bone and cave samples indicates that the source rock is the Devonian age Woodford Shale, and that the energy rich hydrocarbons derived from ancient marine organisms interacting with geologically younger terrestrial vertebrates have therefore resulted in the oldest-known preservation of amniote skin proper.