Photo-credit/Copyright David Richards, University of Bristol

The lectures will be available to watch live online as a webcast! Details on how to access the webcast will be available here on the day of the event.

The extinct dwarf elephants of the Mediterranean are remarkable. They evolved many times, on many islands, from large mainland species such as the 4-metre tall straight-tusked elephant. Some of these dwarf elephant species were just 1-metre tall as adults, making them the smallest elephants to have ever existed. But although we know that dwarf elephants evolved in response to the island environment, we still don’t fully understand the causes.  A big part of this problem is that we simply do not know how old these elephant fossils are: some of the best fossil evidence was collected over 100 years ago, before modern geological dating techniques were available. To change this, I’ve been seeking out sites excavated by Victorian and Edwardian naturalists such as Thomas Spratt, Andrew Leith Adams, Hugh Falconer and Dorothea Bate, so that we could bring modern methods to bear on their discoveries. In this talk, I will tell the story of those pioneering researchers, and how I came to follow in their footsteps with a team of geochronologists, and what our new findings might mean for our understanding of dwarf elephant evolution.

Speaker

Biography

Victoria Herridge’s PhD (Evolutionary Biology, University College London) investigated the evolution of dwarf elephants, and highlighted the need for accurate and reliable dating of Mediterranean island fossils. This led directly to her NERC-funded post-doctoral research at the Natural History Museum, where she co-led an international team of experts on a new fieldwork initiative in the Mediterranean. This project focused on dating important dwarf elephant and dwarf deer fossil localities, to enable the evolution of these species to be understood against the backdrop of the major environmental changes of the Pleistocene.  Victoria is an award winning science communicator – she delivered the 2012 Charles Lyell Award lecture at the British Science Festival, and co-wrote and appeared in the Natural History Museum’s acclaimed interactive film Who Do You Think You Really Are (Premier Award Winner, Learning on Screen 2011).

Event information

The talk will be given twice on the same day, once at 3pm and once at 6pm – please note that if you would like to attend the talks, the 3pm matinees generally have more availability. The talks will be exactly the same in the afternoon and evening.

Entry to the lectures is free to all, but places are allocated on a ballot basis. To enter the ballot please contact Naomi Newbold(naomi.newbold@geolsoc.org.uk) and state whether you would prefer to attend the 3pm or the 6pm lecture.

Programme – 3pm talk
2:30pm Tea & Coffee
3pm Lecture begins
4pm Event ends

Programme – 6pm talk
5:30pm Tea & Coffee
6pm Lecture begins
7pm Short drinks reception
8pm Event ends