Simone Hoffmann
Major Advisor
David Krause
Education
Dipl, Geology | University of Bonn, 2010
Email
simone.hoffmann@stonybrook.edu
Website
www.simonehoffmann.net
Research Interests
I am broadly interested in using morphological data to interpret paleoecology and phylogenetic relationships in particular among Mesozoic mammals.
My previous research has focused on the morphology and reconstruction of a Miocene pangolin from Southern Germany under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Martin at the University of Bonn, Germany. With the newly acquired morphological information I was able to conduct a phylogenetic analysis that provided a more detailed view on the interrelationships of fossil and recent pangolins. Hence as part of my doctoral dissertation I would like to move down the tree of life and work on the functional morphology and phylogeny of more basal mammals. As a Turkana Basin Fellow I am particularly interested in the systematic and evolutionary development of the Gondwanan mammals from the late Cretaceous of Africa.
Previous fieldwork has taken me to the Cretaceous Mata Amarilla Formation of Patagonia, Argentina (with Dr. Thomas Martin) as well as to the Jurassic deposits in the Turpan Basin in NW China (with Dr. Oliver Wings), Eocene oil shales of lake Messel, Germany (with the Research Institute and Natural History Museum Senckenberg) and most recently to the Middle Jurassic of Siberia (with Dr. Thomas Martin and Dr. Alexander Averianov).
