Beasts Before and After Us with Dr Elsa Panciroli

Part of the Yorkshire Fossil Festival 2021.
It’s often said we live in the age of mammals, which began with the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But as Scottish palaeontologist Dr Elsa Panciroli reveals in her recent acclaimed book, Beasts Before Us, this is merely the last sentence at the end of a much longer evolutionary tale. In this talk, she’ll reveal the story of mammal evolution as you’ve never heard it before, from the first animals to walk on land, to the giant beasts that left their footprints on Britain’s hot desert sands millions of years before the dinosaurs even existed. She’ll show how extinction has punctuated their journey, creating the patterns of life we observe in fossil record. As we face the current sixth mass extinction, how might mammals adapt and change in the face of climate change?
About Dr Elsa Panciroli
Elsa is a palaeontologist who studies the evolution and ecology of extinct animals - particularly mammals from the time of dinosaurs. She is a researcher based at the University of Oxford, and associate researcher at the National Museum of Scotland. Elsa’s work takes her around the world to collaborate with scientists in China, the US, South Africa and Europe to understand the origin of major animal groups. She is a keen science communicator delivering public talks on palaeontology and the origin of mammals. She has written for The Guardian, Palaeontology Online and Biological Sciences Review. She is a graduate of the BBC’s Expert Woman training programme, and frequently contributes to radio and podcast programmes, such as Crowdscience, The John Beatty Show and Our Lives. Her latest book, Beasts Before Us, is the first popular science book to completely re-tell the story of our most ancient of ancestors, proving they weren’t just mammal precursors: they were pioneers.