Michel Laurin

Michel Laurin has been a tenured CNRS research scientist since 1998. He also worked as associate invited professor in the U. Paris 7 (1996-1998), where he lectured on paleontology, the evolution of animals, biological nomenclature, and other related topics. He has supervised 4 doctoral students so far. He has presented communications in many national and international conferences and in many departmental seminars (on invitation, with financing). He has published 98 research papers in various journals indexed by the ISI, including some of the most prestigious ones (Nature, PNAS, TREE, Systematic Biology, etc.), as well as various other papers (meeting proceedings, book chapters, etc.), for a total of 165 printed publications (excluding abstracts), in addition to 26 pages of the Tree of Life, an on-line, free-access encyclopedia on the evolution of life, and pages in other scholarly web sites. More popular contributions include a book on paleontology and systematics in French and English. He has led the team "Squelette des vertébrés" (which included eight tenured scientists, in addition a postdoc, a technician, and six doctoral students) for two years (2007-2008) and currently leads the team "Metazoan phylogeny and diversification" of the Natural History Museum (Paris), which includes about 15 tenured research scientists. He is a member of several scientific societies, and has served the ISPN (International Society for Phylogenetic Nomenclature) as both Secretary (three terms, including a current one) and President. 50 journals and publishers regularly solicit reviews from him, and currently serves on nine editorial boards, including for the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. In January 2011, he became Chief editor of the Comptes Rendus Palevol. His specialty is the evolution of vertebrates from the Cambrian to the present. His current interests include comparative methods and dating the tree of life, as well as other problems such as the invasion of land by vertebrates, the appearance of the tympanum (ear drum), and origin of extant amphibians. This work has introduced many innovations in paleontology and paleobiology, notably in the form of five computer programs, some of which can be used to perform paleontological dating of the tree of life or to analyze bone microanatomical data.