Last week 14 members of the GZN participated in the Paleo4Alps meeting in Bolzano, Italy.
This was the first joint meeting of the Austrian, Italian, German, and Swiss paleontological societies, and brought together 320 researchers from 25 countries.
In addition to the fabulous food and the spectacular views of the Dolomites, the conference showcased many wide-ranging and interdisciplinary aspects of paleontology, highlighting valuable field and specimen-based work alongside cutting-edge tools.
Members of the GZN (Paleontology; Danijela Dimitrijevic, Wolfgang Kiessling) organized a special symposium in “Big Paleontology”, which was inspired by the PaleoSynthesis initiative, and highlighted progress in methodology and data synthesis.
As well as strengthening connections to geoscientists across Europe, it was a great opportunity to catch with old friends, including many of our former students, postdocs, and visitors. Three of our team members also won prizes – Aldo Benites Palomino won an award for best early career research talk, Bastian Seidl won an award for best student talk, and Joël Koelewijn won an award for best student poster. Two of team members (Aldo Benites Palomino, Ádám Kocsis) also won an award for most adventurous journey, by cycling from Munich to Bolzano over the alps!
We are grateful to the main conference organizers Evelyn Kustatscher (Tiroler Landesmuseen) and Camilla Wellstein (Free University of Bolzano-Bozen), and to the many volunteers who worked hard behind the scenes to make this event such a huge success.
Rachel, Joël, Wolfgang, Aldo, Zhen, Adam, Christian, Barbara, Dani, Basti, Ines, Sebastian, Angelo
