Leonard Dewaele

Earth and History of life

ldewaele@naturalsciences.be
0000-0003-1188-2515

Leonard Dewaele is a palaeontologist aiming to unravel how seals, sea lions, fur seals, walruses, and otters adapted to life in water. He works both with extant material, as well as fossil material from all over the world, with a special interest in fossil material from the Pisco Basin in Peru.

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Function

FED-tWIN researcher in vertebrate palaeontology.

Research team: Palaeobiosphere Evolution unit
Research themes: Evolution and the Web of Life
Ecosystems over time

Current Project

Leonard is the principal investigator of the FED-tWIN MEATLOAF project, a collaboration between the Institute and the University of Antwerp, to study how certain groups of carnivorans evolved from a terrestrial habitat, with terrestrial locomotion and feeding strategies, to a life in water, and how locomotor capabilities and feeding strategies changed accordingly.

Area of Expertise

The FED-tWIN MEATLOAF project tackles its research questions from different angles. This project, i.e., Leonard's research, includes a variety of techniques and expertises, including systematics, taxonomy, phylogeny, geometric morphometrics, comparative anatomy and microanatomy, as well as experimental biology with kinematic modelling, strength and stress analyses, computational fluid dynamics, etc.

External activities

Postdoctoral researcher at the FunMorph Lab (UAntwerpen, Biology Department)

Professional Experience

Prior to his FED-tWIN project, Leonard studied geology at the UGent. His PhD thesis on the fossil seal diversity of Antwerp was co-supervised by Olivier Lambert from the Institute. This was followed by a BAEF postdoctoral project on intraspecific variation in seal bones at George Mason University (Fairfax, Virginia) and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (Washington, D.C.), and an FNRS postdoctoral project on fossil Peruvian seals at the ULiège.