Ivan Sansom is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 palaeontologist, Senior Lecturer in Palaeobiology

Paleobiology

Paleobiology is a growing and comparatively new discipline which combines the methods and findings of the natural science biology with the methods and findings of the earth science paleontology...

 at the University of Birmingham

University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...

. His research primarily has focused on the conodont

Conodont

Conodonts are extinct chordates resembling eels, classified in the class Conodonta. For many years, they were known only from tooth-like microfossils now called conodont elements, found in isolation. Knowledge about soft tissues remains relatively sparse to this day...

 palaeobiology and the early Palaeozoic radiation of vertebrates.

Sansom is an editor of the Journal of the Geological Society.

In 2001 Sansom was a recipient of the Palaeontological Association's

Palaeontological Association

The Palaeontological Association is a charitable organisation based in the UK founded in 1957 for the promotion of the study of palaeontology.-Functions:...

 Hodson Award conferred on palaeontologists who have made a notable early contribution to the science.

Selected publications

• Sansom, I. J., Smith, M. P., Armstrong, H. A. and Smith, M. M. 1992. Presence of the earliest vertebrate hard tissues in conodonts. Science 256: 1308-1311.]
• Sansom, I. J., Smith, M. P. and Smith, M. M. 1994. Dentine in conodonts. Nature 368: 591.
• Sansom, I. J., Smith, M. P. and Smith, M. M. 1996. Scales of thelodont and shark-like fishes from the Ordovician. Nature 379: 628-630.
• Smith, M. P., Sansom, I. J. and Repetski, J. E. 1996. Histology of the first fish. Nature 380: 702-704.
• Coates, M. I., Sequeira, S. E. K., Sansom, I. J. and Smith, M. M. 1998. Spines and tissues of ancient sharks. Nature 396: 729-730.
• Sansom, I. J., Donoghue, P. C. J. and Albanesi, G. L. 2005. Histology and affinity of the earliest armoured vertebrate. Biology Letters 2: 446-449.

External links

Sansom's home page