ProgPal (or Progressive Palaeontology if you aren’t into shortening titles) is a student run annual palaeontology conference where final year undergraduates, masters students and PhD students alike can showcase their work. This conference will always have a special place in my heart as it was the first ever Palaeontological conference I attended. As an undergraduate about to go into her final year (all the way back in 2018),
I was amazed by the broad scope of peoples work; the fossils they were working on, the techniques they were employing and the deep passion they evidently held for their own individual projects as well as for those of their peers’. And I still am, having attending ProgPal ever since.
Jump forward to this year, once again ProgPal was hosted online (thanks COVID!) by the team from University College London (UCL). Miranta Kouvari and Cecily Nicholl (the co-chairs of ProgPal 2021) did such an amazing job ensuring everything ran smoothly as well as making the conference a fun and enjoyable event for everyone.
After reading the abstract book I was impressed and excited by the large diversity of research currently being undertaken within the field and made my list of talks and posters that I would be able to attend given the few days that the conference was running for. Overall there was 51 full talks of fifteen minutes, 20 lightning talks lasting five minutes and 18 posters (mine being one of them). There were so many stimulating talks and I am genuinely sad that I couldn’t get to watch them all.
My ProgPal 2021 conference kicked off with a workshop on the PBDB (Palaeobiology Database) hosted by Dr. Phil Mannion from UCL on Thursday morning, running at the same time as another workshop on ‘Stepping out of Academia’. The PBDB workshop was extremely interesting by going through a worked example with Dr. Mannion, it made what appeared to be a quite daunting, complicated process (from certain accounts) relatively easy to understand. Many researchers use this database as a ‘jumping off’ point for their own research, meaning that it is a constantly evolving and dynamic tool that every palaeontologist should aim to get involved in growing.
After the workshops, we were free to watch talks, look at posters and ask questions on the online Discord sever. This server was established last year as, like all conferences, ProgPal had to be presented completely online. I personally really like this way of communicating with conference delegates because sometimes I find that with in-person conferences you do not get the chance to ask your questions to the presenter, whereas online you are able to message them in their own channel specifically set up for delegates to ask and answer questions as well as socialising with people.
Although nothing can beat an actual in-person ProgPal, this move to virtual conferences, although through necessity, I believe, has proved a highly successful one. This is especially true for exhibiting research from people who might not have been able to attend in person for financial or geographic reasons. Alongside this, the great thing about ProgPal over the past couple of conferences I have attended, is that you can view the talks and posters at any time and not have to follow a structured predetermined schedule.
Thursday evening was the icebreaker event which unfortunately I was unable to attend, however having spoken to people that did, they very much enjoyed meeting new people as well as chatting about hobbies, TV, films and games.
I spent Friday listening to the full talks and reading as many posters as I could, having gone through my list of lightning talks on Thursday. That evening was the quiz - a replacement for the annual dinner - and it was so much fun! Teams had to answer questions, primarily palaeontological based, an example being unscrambling letters to reveal famous fossil localities. The final question of the whole quiz was simply “Stegosaurus or Triceratops?”. Miranta’s dog Bilbo would run to either a stegosaurus toy or a triceratops toy both with an equal amount of doggie treats arrayed in front of them. This purely chance answer was obviously in the lap of the dino-gods and led to much excitement between the teams. This process reached fever-pitch when it was repeated, due to two teams tying for first place, whoever Bilbo ran to was the ultimate winning team. After the Jurassic Stegosaurus had been a more tempting proposition first time round, the later Cretaceous Triceratops proved the tastier option finally. This quiz was a great fun and one I know everyone participating enjoyed it.
Saturday, like Friday was filled with watching talks and for me, answering questions on my own Discord channel regarding my poster exhibiting the results of my MPhil at Manchester University on Spotted Hyaena Denning Localities during the Pleistocene. The conference ended with awards for: Best Full Talk, Best Lightning Talk and Best Poster, and with that ProgPal 2021 was concluded.
Over the course of the three days I enjoyed many presentations and posters on a vast array of palaeontological research including: Pleistocene bovids from Greece and Africa; Megalodon speed and dietary requirements; a new Pterosaur trackway site in Germany; specialised Trilobite appendages; palaeopathologies of dinosaurs; corallite sizes in Scleractinian corals; neornithischian tree topologies; forelimb anatomy of ornithischian dinosaurs; insect herbivory on leaves; the Cynodont fossil record and finally taphonomic process in cave deposits from South East Asia.
This conference was extremely good and the quality of research just keeps getting better year on year. I want to say a huge “thank you” to Miranta and Cecily and the rest of the team at UCL for organising and making ProgPal so enjoyable this year.