How microscopic details help understand the life of giant, extinct sauropod dinosaurs and their environment 150 million years ago
Dr. Emanuel Tschopp
On Thursday, 12 February 2026, Dr. Emanuel Tschopp (Freie Universität Berlin) will give a lecture in the Geocolloquium series.
13:15, Lecture hall C.011
Dr. Emanuel Tschopp (FU Berlin)
How microscopic details help understand the life of giant, extinct sauropod dinosaurs and their environment 150 million years ago
Abstract: Sauropod dinosaurs were the largest animals that ever lived on land. Understanding how they evolved, lived, and how their ecosystems were capable of maintaining diverse and abundant sauropod communities, can therefore yield information about fundamental processes in Nature. Through a combination of confocal laser-scan microscopy, micro-CT scanning, and stable isotope analysis, we aim to better understand how seasonality impacted plant availability and thus controlled spatial distribution of these giant herbivores.
Vita: I am an evolutionary paleobiologist specialized on sauropod dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation. My main interests include how they evolved, how they could grow so big, and how their community was structured. Currently at Freie Universität Berlin, I have done my undergraduate at University of Zurich, Switzerland, before moving to Universidade NOVA de Lisboa in Portugal for my PhD and a first Postdoc. Since then, I’ve held a Marie Curie Postdoc at Università di Torino in Italy and a Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Fund Postdoc at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, USA.