Professor Receives Early Career Award

Lauren Sallan, assistant professor of earth and environmental science, has received the Stensiö Award, which is given to an early career researcher in early vertebrate palaeontology. Named after Swedish paleozoologist Erik Stensiö, the award recognizes the research and impact of a scholar within 10 years of receiving a Ph.D.

Sallan’s research looks at how global events, environmental change, and ecological interactions affect long-term evolution (macroevolution) in early vertebrates, the ray-finned fishes that make up half of vertebrate diversity, and marine ecosystems through time. She tests her hypotheses using methods ranging from "big data" quantitative approaches and mathematical modeling to studying the fossil record of fishes and reconstructing the pattern of relationships among organisms.

In November, Sallan and her lab published a paper in Science which described how a mass extinction 359 million years ago known as the Hangenberg event triggered a drastic and lasting transformation of Earth’s vertebrate community. Before the event, large creatures were the norm, but for at least 40 million years afterward, the oceans were dominated by markedly smaller fish. The story was covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, Discovery News, ScienceNow, DailyMail, Der Spiegel, and others. In October her paper showing that the ancient shark Bandringa seems to have lived both in fresh and marine water won the Taylor and Francis Award for Best Paper (second place) in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Sallan earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and came to Penn in the fall of 2014.