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Palaeobiology Research Expertise

Special equipment and software measures small specimens. Alestes stuhlmanni NMC81-0203.

Martin Lipman © Canadian Museum of Nature

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Special software in a computer hooked up to a microscope and camera is able to measure a very small specimen, and make it easier to see by displaying it on a monitor. The specimen shown here is about 1 cm long. It is the premaxilla of a fish from Africa, Alestes stuhlmanni.

Tools used in palaeobiological research.

Martin Lipman © Canadian Museum of Nature

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Palaeobiology research is the study of the evolutionary and ecological relationships of fossil organisms, and the palaeoenvironments in which they lived.

Research in palaeobiology at the Canadian Museum of Nature covers the following areas:

  • fossil fishes (Devonian, Cretaceous, and Late Tertiary and Quaternary fishes of North America and Africa)
  • Late Tertiary and Quaternary zoology (Plio-Pleistocene vertebrates of northern North America)
  • zooarchaeology (recent North American fossil vertebrates)
  • Mesozoic marine and terrestrial faunas (including dinosaurs)
  • Tertiary mammals
  • Tertiary geology
  • palaeoecology.
Sternberg’s magnifying glass enlarges a carnosaur fossil tooth.

Martin Lipman © Canadian Museum of Nature

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Sternberg Magnifying Glass

Still in use today, this magnifying glass assisted Charles Sternberg in his research. The tooth, from a carnosaur of the Tyrannosauridae family that lived during the Cretaceous period, was found in Alberta by Sternberg in 1926.