Léa joined Danielle Fraser's lab a the Canadian Museum of Nature and Hillary Maddin's lab at Carleton University when coming from France to work on her PhD here at Carleton.
Back to France, in 2020 Léa graduated from her Master’s degree in “Paléontologie, paléoenvironnement et patrimoine” at “l’Université Rennes 1” in Rennes (Brittany, France). She completed her MSc thesis in Switzerland, in Porrentruy at the Jurassica Museum. She studied fossil skulls and a mandible belonging to a related group of Rhinoceroses, Amynodontidae. Amynodontidae are extinct animals, which were present on Earth between -48 to -25 million years. Fossils of these animals can be found today in Asia, North America, and Europe. To give you an idea of what an Amynodontidae looked like, it is a mix between a tapir and a hippopotamus.
Her MSc research was just published in Comptes Rendus Palevol. In this paper, she describes new skulls and a mandible belonging to Amynodontidae found in Kazakhstan and the USA. She discusses the relationships within the Amynodontidae but also between Amynodontidae, rhinoceroses and other related groups. She also discusses their cranial adaptations, which, for some Amynodontidae, would have allowed them to manipulate and size their food. Finally she talks about their dispersal of the European continent, 33 million years ago.
In addition, she has 3-D modelled one of the skulls that she studies. This 3D model was published and is free for anyone to use, to view please click: 3D skull model
Léa's PhD research focuses on studying the variation of morphology of teeth and bones of modern rodent voles across climate variables (temperature, precipitation and elevation) in Canada. She intends to build models that she will apply on fossil rodent voles to access teeth and bones morphology variation through time. She wants to understand how vole species adapted to climate and environment changes of the Pleistocene era (2.6Ma-11.7Ka). Her work aims to provide insight into rodents' future responses to climate change and potentially enable the development of conservation strategies.
Photo credit: Léa Veine-Tonizzo
Field work, September 2023, Prince Edward Island (Permian-Carboniferous)
Posted on: Monday, April 17, 2023