Susannah "Susie" Catherine Rose Maidment is a British palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, London.[1] She is also an honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham. She is internationally recognised for her research on ornithischian dinosaur evolution, and was awarded the 2016 Hodson Award[2] of the Palaeontological Association and the 2017 Lyell Fund of the Geological Society of London.[3][4] She was featured as a 2019 National Geographic Women of Impact.[5]

Susannah Maidment
Maidment in 2018
Other namesSusie Maidment
Alma materImperial College London
University of Cambridge
Scientific career
InstitutionsNatural History Museum, London
University of Birmingham

Education and career

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Maidment studied geology at Imperial College London, graduating with an MSc in 2003. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2007, in which she studied the systematics of the dinosaur group Stegosauria.[1][4][6] Her research was supervised by David Norman and Paul Upchurch.[7] Following time working as an exploration geologist in Vietnam,[1] she moved in 2009 to work with Paul Barrett at the Natural History Museum, London, as a postdoctoral researcher co-investigator on a NERC-funded project[8] on ornithischian dinosaur locomotion.[9][10]

In 2012 she returned to Imperial College London as a Research Fellow, before moving in 2016 to the University of Brighton as a Senior Lecturer.[1] In 2018 she re-joined the Natural History Museum, where she works as a senior researcher.[1] She is an honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham.[11]

Research

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Maidment has published more than 50 scientific papers, primarily focused on the systematics, evolution and palaeobiology of ornithischian dinosaurs.[12] She has worked extensively on stegosaurs, and is considered the world leader on this group.[4] Her contributions have included overall revisions of the systematics of the group,[6][13][14] the description of the Portuguese stegosaur Miragaia,[15] the description of the oldest known stegosaur, Adratiklit, from the Middle Jurassic of Morocco,[16][17] the oldest known ankylosaurian Spicomellus, also from Morocco,[18] anatomical and systematic revisions of Chinese stegosaurs,[19][20] and work on the postcranial skeleton and body mass of Stegosaurus.[21][22][23] She has also published several papers on locomotion and the evolution of quadrupedality in ornithischian dinosaurs.[9][10][24]

In 2015, she was part of a team who reported evidence of original collagen fibres and blood cells in Cretaceous dinosaur specimens.[25][26][27] Her most recent research has focused on the stratigraphy of the Morrison Formation of the Western United States.[4][28][29][30] She was one of the lead scientists for the "Mission Jurassic" dinosaur excavation project that began in 2019.[31][32]

In 2023, she was scientific advisor for the tv series Prehistoric Planet.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "Dr Susannah Maidment | Natural History Museum". www.nhm.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
  2. ^ "Medal and Award Winners List | The Palaeontological Association". www.palass.org. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
  3. ^ "Dinosaur expert's double award". 10 May 2017.
  4. ^ a b c d "Hodson Award: Dr Susannah C. R. Maidment" (PDF). The Palaeontology Newsletter. 94: 12.
  5. ^ @NatGeoUK (2019-10-28). "Women of Impact". National Geographic. Retrieved 2019-12-02.
  6. ^ a b Maidment, S.C.R.; Norman, D.B.; Barrett, P.M.; Upchurch, P (2008). "Systematics and phylogeny of Stegosauria (Dinosauria: Ornithischia)". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 6 (4): 367–407. doi:10.1017/S1477201908002459. S2CID 85673680.
  7. ^ "Dr David Norman — Department of Earth Sciences". www.esc.cam.ac.uk. 28 January 2015. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
  8. ^ "GOTW - Grants on the Web". gotw.nerc.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
  9. ^ a b Maidment, S.C.R.; Bates, K.T.; Falkingham, P.L.; VanBuren, C.; Arbour, V.; Barrett, P.M. (2013). "Locomotion in ornithischian dinosaurs: an assessment using three-dimensional computational modelling". Biological Reviews. 89 (3): 588–617. doi:10.1111/brv.12071. ISSN 1464-7931. PMID 24251809. S2CID 2499006.
  10. ^ a b Maidment, S.C.R.; Barrett, P.M. (2012). "Does morphological convergence imply functional similarity? A test using the evolution of quadrupedalism in ornithischian dinosaurs". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences. 279 (1743): 3765–3771. doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.1040. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 3415913. PMID 22719033.
  11. ^ "Vertebrate Palaeontology - Palaeobiology theme - Geosystems research - University of Birmingham". www.birmingham.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-07-28.
  12. ^ "Susannah Maidment - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
  13. ^ Raven, T.J.; Maidment, S.C.R. (2017). "A new phylogeny of Stegosauria (Dinosauria, Ornithischia)" (PDF). Palaeontology. 60 (3): 401–408. doi:10.1111/pala.12291. hdl:10044/1/45349. S2CID 55613546.
  14. ^ Maidment, S.C.R. (2010). "Stegosauria: a historical review of the body fossil record and phylogenetic relationships". Swiss Journal of Geosciences. 103 (2): 199–210. doi:10.1007/s00015-010-0023-3. S2CID 84415016.
  15. ^ Mateus, O.; Maidment, S.C.R.; Christiansen, N.A. (2009). "A new long-necked 'sauropod-mimic'stegosaur and the evolution of the plated dinosaurs". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 276 (1663): 1815–1821. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1909. PMC 2674496. PMID 19324778.
  16. ^ Maidment, S. C. R.; Raven, T. J.; Ouarhache, D.; Barrett, P. M. (2019). "North Africa's first stegosaur: Implications for Gondwanan thyreophoran dinosaur diversity". Gondwana Research. 77: 82–97. doi:10.1016/j.gr.2019.07.007. hdl:10141/622706. ISSN 1342-937X.
  17. ^ "The oldest stegosaur ever has been discovered in Morocco". www.nhm.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-08-20.
  18. ^ Maidment, Susannah C. R.; Strachan, Sarah J.; Ouarhache, Driss; Scheyer, Torsten M.; Brown, Emily E.; Fernandez, Vincent; Johanson, Zerina; Raven, Thomas J.; Barrett, Paul M. (2021-09-23). "Bizarre dermal armour suggests the first African ankylosaur". Nature Ecology & Evolution. 5 (12): 1576–1581. doi:10.1038/s41559-021-01553-6. ISSN 2397-334X. PMID 34556830. S2CID 237616095.
  19. ^ Maidment, S.C.R.; Wei, G. (2006). "A review of the Late Jurassic stegosaurs (Dinosauria, Stegosauria) from the People's Republic of China". Geological Magazine. 143 (5): 621–634. Bibcode:2006GeoM..143..621M. doi:10.1017/S0016756806002500. S2CID 83661067.
  20. ^ Maidment, S.C.R.; Wei, G.; Norman, D.B. (2006). "Re-description of the postcranial skeleton of the middle Jurassic stegosaur Huayangosaurus taibaii". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 26 (4): 944–956. doi:10.1671/0272-4634(2006)26[944:ROTPSO]2.0.CO;2. S2CID 85750667.
  21. ^ Maidment, S.C.R.; Brassey, C.; Barrett, P.M. (2015). "The Postcranial Skeleton of an Exceptionally Complete Individual of the Plated Dinosaur Stegosaurus stenops (Dinosauria: Thyreophora) from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Wyoming, U.S.A." PLOS ONE. 10 (10): e0138352. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1038352M. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0138352. PMC 4605687. PMID 26466098.
  22. ^ Brassey, C; Maidment, S.C.R.; Barrett, P.M. (2015). "Body mass estimates of an exceptionally complete Stegosaurus (Ornithischia: Thyreophora): comparing volumetric and linear bivariate mass estimation methods". Biology Letters. 11 (3): 20140984. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2014.0984. PMC 4387493. PMID 25740841.
  23. ^ "Scientists reveal the body weight of the world's most complete Stegosaurus | Imperial News | Imperial College London". Imperial News. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
  24. ^ Maidment, S.C.R.; Linton, D.H.; Upchurch, P.; Barrett, P.M. (2012). "Limb-Bone Scaling Indicates Diverse Stance and Gait in Quadrupedal Ornithischian Dinosaurs". PLOS ONE. 7 (5): e36904. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...736904M. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036904. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3358279. PMID 22666333.
  25. ^ Bertazzo, S.; Maidment, S.C.R.; Kallepitis, C.; Fearn, S.; Stevens, M.M.; Xie, H.-N. (2015). "Fibres and cellular structures preserved in 75-million–year-old dinosaur specimens". Nature Communications. 6: 7352. Bibcode:2015NatCo...6.7352B. doi:10.1038/ncomms8352. PMC 4468865. PMID 26056764.
  26. ^ Rincon, Paul (2015-06-09). "'Blood cells' found in dino fossils". BBC News. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
  27. ^ Sample, Ian (2015-06-09). "75-million-year-old dinosaur blood and collagen discovered in fossil fragments". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
  28. ^ Maidment, S.C.R.; Balikova, D.; Muxworthy, A.R. (2017), "Magnetostratigraphy of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation at Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, and Prospects for Using Magnetostratigraphy as a Correlative Tool in the Morrison Formation", Terrestrial Depositional Systems, Elsevier, pp. 279–302, doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-803243-5.00007-8, ISBN 9780128032435
  29. ^ Poppick, Laura (2019-08-15). "To date a dinosaur". Knowable Magazine. doi:10.1146/knowable-081419-1. S2CID 202435890.
  30. ^ Maidment, S. C. R.; Muxworthy, A. (2019). "A chronostratigraphic framework for the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation, western U.S.A.". Journal of Sedimentary Research. 89 (10): 1017–1038. Bibcode:2019JSedR..89.1017M. doi:10.2110/jsr.2019.54. hdl:10141/622707. ISSN 1527-1404. S2CID 210343715.
  31. ^ "Mission Jurassic excavation | Natural History Museum". www.nhm.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-05-04.
  32. ^ "Mission Jurassic: Searching for dinosaur bones". BBC News. Retrieved 2019-08-15.