A world-beating introduction to modern palaeobiology. Find out more about the Bristol palaeobiology group here, and a review of the status and outcomes of the MSc in its first decade and more here.

For further information, go to the Faculty of Science programme web pages.

The University offers five University of Bristol Santander Abbey Masters Scholarships of £5000 each for applicants for any taught Masters programme, from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela and Peru (closing date, 1st May 2012). There are scholarships for Danish students. Further, the Hong Kong Alumni Scholarship supports one student a year who has substantial links with Hong Kong (closing date, 10th February, 2012), and the Fulbright-Bristol University Award provides generous support to one US citizen per year (closing date, 17th October, 2011, a year in advance of your start date), and the American Alumni Scholarships support up to three US citizens each year (closing date, 11th May each year). Further, there are loan schemes for US students. The University also offers a funding finder.

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News from the Palaeobiology Masters Degree Programme
		September 2012 - Palaeobiology's 250th MSc graduate sparks first reunion The University of Bristol's Palaeobiology and Biodiversity Research Group is celebrating the fact that 250 students have now completed its MSc in Palaeobiology, with its first reunion event for former and current Bristol palaeobiologists. The reunion weekend was a chance to welcome new members of staff, Dr Davide Pisani and Dr Jakob Vinther, and included talks from staff, students, and alumni, a CPD programme of new numerical methods, a tour and display, and a field trip. Liz Martin from Canada (left) was the 250th student to complete the MSc in Palaeobiology. Read more...
		September 2012 - Palaeontology student receives prestigious Fulbright award Rachel Frigot, who has just finished the MSc in Palaeobiology programme for 2011-2, has received a Fulbright Award to enable her to study at Johns Hopkins University in the US on one of the most prestigious and selective scholarship programmes operating world-wide. Created by treaty in 1948, the US-UK Fulbright Commission offers awards for study or research in any field, at any accredited US or UK university. Rachel funded her Masters studies in Bristol over the past two years by working as a tutor. Read more...
		April 2012 - MSc project on giant marine reptile with a gammy jaw... Imagine having arthritis in your jaw bones... if they're over 2 metres long! A new study by scientists at the University of Bristol has found signs of a degenerative condition similar to human arthritis in the jaw of a pliosaur, an ancient sea reptile that lived 150 million years ago. Such a disease has never been described before in fossilised Jurassic reptiles. The animal is the pliosaur Pliosaurus from the Upper Jurassicof Westbury, Wiltshire, and the new paper,published todsy in Palaeontology is the core of Judyth Sassoon's research thesis which she completed while studying for the Bristol MSc in Palaeobiology. Read more...
		April 2012 - Former MSc student publishes the textbook Steve Brusatte, who completed the MSc in Palaeobiology in Bristol in 2007, and went on to work for his PhD at the American Museum of Natural History, has just published the most authoritative and up-to-date textbook on dinosaurs, with the title Dinosaur Paleobiology. This is the first in a new series of advanced palaeontological books, published worldwide by Wiley-Blackwell, and edited by Mike Benton from the Bristol group. Read more...
		January 2012 - Former MSc student wins BAFTA Myles McLeod, who graduated from the MSc in Palaeobiology in 2000, and who runs a film production company, The Brothers McLeod, won a BAFTA at the British Academy Children's Awards for their show 'Quiff and Boot'. They were asked by BBC learning to create a number of short animations about maths for primary school Key Stage 2, and it ran on BBC2 as a 45 minute programme. The British Academy Children's Awards celebrates the very best in children's film, television, games and online media of the past year and the talent behind their successes. Read more...
		December 2011 - More scientific publications by Bristol MSc students The year 2011 has been marked by more top-level publications in international journals by former Bristol Palaeobiology Masters students. We count a further eight papers, bringing the running total, since 1996, to 91 papers. Highlights of 2011 include a paper in PNAS, one of the world's leading scientific journals, from Philippa Thorne, presenting her innovative work on ichthyosaur evolution. Other journals include such leading organs as Palaeontology, Palaeo-3, and Evolution & Development. The Bristol Palaeobiology and Biodiversity Research group overall published a total of 70 papers in 2011, of which the contribution by Masters students is 11 percent. Read more...
		May 2011 - The sea dragons bounce back Bristol Palaeobiology MSc student Philippa Thorne has just had her MSc thesis published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, one of the world's leading science journals. In her work, she showed that the evolution of ichthyosaurs, important marine predators of the age of dinosaurs, was hit hard by a mass extinction event 200 million years ago. Ichthyosaurs are iconic fossils, first discovered 200 years ago by Mary Anning on the Jurassic coast of Dorset at Lyme Regis. The new study uses numerical methods to explore rates of evolution, diversity, and range of body morphology through the crisis. Read more...
		December 2010 - Record number of scientific publications by Bristol MSc students The year 2010 has seen the the largest number of publications by current and former Bristol Palaeobiology Masters students, totalling 20 - one 'public understanding of science' contribution, and 19 scientific papers in journals ranging from Science to Palaeontology, and Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society to Biology Letters. This brings the total of original refereed scientific papers by MSc and MSci students to 81, since the MSc began in 1996. The Bristol Palaeobiology and Biodiversity Research group overall published a total of 80 papers in 2010, of which the contribution by Masters students is 25 percent. Read more...
		November 2010 - New prize announced for best MSc thesis A new prize for the best project from students enrolled for the MSc in Palaeobiology, to be called the David Dineley Prize, has been launched. The first award will be made in early 2011, for the best MSc thesis in the 2009-2010 cohort, as judged by the teaching staff and the external examiner for the programme. Read more....
		May 2010 - MSc student wins prize for thesis Nick Crumpton, who completed the MSc in Palaeobiology in Bristol in September 2009, has just been awarded the Geologists' Association prize for one of the best earth sciences Masters theses in the UK in 2009. Nick worked on adaptation and morphometrics of the teeth of tiny Triassic and Jurassic mammals, and the prize was awarded for his application of innovative numerical imaging techniques and comparisons with analogous extant forms. Read more...
		April 2010 - Former MSc students get permanent palaeontology positions Former students of the Bristol MSc have achieved excellent careers in palaeontology - in museums, universities, publishing, and the media. We normally do not highlight their new posts, but keep a list of current jobs of former students where we can. Three have recently secured permanent positions - Isla Gladstone, as the new Curator of Natural Sciences at the Yorkshire Museum in York, Tai Kubo as Curator at the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Japan, and Phil Hopley as Lecturer in Palaeoclimatology at Birkbeck College, University of London. Many congratulations to them all!
		March 2010 - Spectacular new opportunity for Bristol MSc students The 'Jurassic Ecosystem of Strawberry Bank, Ilminster' project was launched on 25th March, with generous funding from the Esmée Fairburn Foundation. The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution's museum holds a unique spectacular collection of exceptionally preserved fossils from the late Lias of Ilminster, Somerset, that show exquisite 3-dimensional detail, and many have soft tissues. The funding supports essential curatorial work at the BRLSI and development of a substantial new research programme by Bristol MSc students, beginning with the October 2010 intake. Read more...
		February 2010 - Humble algae are the key to whale evolution Felix Marx, who completed the MSci in Palaeontology & Evolution in Bristol last summer, has published part of his research in Science, jointly with Mark Uhen from George Mason University in the US. Their work shows that diatoms, a form of planktonic algae, have been key to the evolution of the diversity of whales. The fossil record shows that diatoms and whales rose and fell in diversity together. Whales do not eat diatoms, but the giant baleen whales feed on krill, small crustaceans that themselves feed on diatoms. Felix began this project while completing his MSci project in Bristol, and his PhD research is jointly supervised between the University of Otago and University of Bristol. Read more...
		December 2009 - Another bumper year for publications by Bristol MSc students The year 2009 has seen the publication of a further 11 scientific papers by current and former Bristol MSc and MSci palaeontology students. This brings the total of original refereed scientific papers by MSc and MSci students to 64, since the MSc began in 1996. The Bristol Palaeobiology and Biodiversity Research group overall published a total of 64 papers in 2009, of which the contribution by Masters students is 17 percent. Read more...
		November 2009 - Britain's oldest dinosaur to be released After 210 million years of being entombed in rock, the Bristol Dinosaur is about to be released, thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant of £295,000 awarded to the University of Bristol. The funding will pay for a preparator, and an Education Officer. MSc students can be part of this educational initiative. MSc student Judyth Sassoon assisted with the launch of the award, and her tastefully varnished finger nails (left) have graced countless photographs worldwide. Read more...
		October 2009 - Why giant sea scorpions got so big Palaeozoic eurypterids were remarkable for their huge size. It had been thought that these predators became ever larger in an 'arms race' with their prey, the heavily armnoured fishes, or that their size increase was enabled by extra-high levels of oxygen in the atmosphere at the time. New work by MSc student James Lamsdell and Dr Simon Braddy shows that both views are correct: one eurypterid lineage became large to prey on the armoured fishes, and the other because of enhanced oxygen. The work is published today in Biology Letters. Read more...
		September 2009 - Fossil water scorpion was ancestor of giant sweep-feeders New finds of a fossil water scorpion that lived in rivers around Bristol some 370 Million years ago have shown Bristol palaeontologists what the animal looked like and how it was related to other eurypterids. The work was part of James Lamsdell's Bristol Palaeobiology MSc project, and it is authored also by Dr Simon Braddy from Bristol, and colleague Dr Erik Tetlie from Norway. It is published this week in the journal Palaeontology. Read more...
		September 2009 - Reptiles stood upright after mass extinction Having studied fossil tracks of reptiles from below and above the end-Permian mass extinction boundary, Prof Mike Benton and former MSc Palaeobiology student Tai Kubo found that medium- and large-sized reptiles changed from walking with a sprawling gait, to walking with their legs tucked under their bodies. This happened across the crisis boundary, whereas evidence from skeletal fossils had previously suggested the transition took some 20-30 million years, through much of the Triassic. Read more...
		September 2009 - No universal driver for plankton evolution During his MSc project, Bristol Palaeobiology student Ben Kotrc, now undertaking a PhD at Harvard, analysed the relative importance of abiotic versus biotic effect on the evolution of marine plankton. The results of the work, supervised by Dr Daniela Schmidt and recently published in PNAS, show that both competition with other organisms and long term climatic changes influence evolutionary change in radiolarians. Read more...
		June 2009 - New research on early mammals Two MSc Palaeobiology students in the Department of Earth Sciences have had notable successes in their work on the habits of some of the earliest mammals to have lived, some two hundred million years ago. Nick Crumpton and Kelly Richards are studying the fossilised remains of animals from the Triassic and Jurassic periods, found in ancient caves in the Bristol area, applying innovative new research techniques. Nick has been honoured with a 'best paper' prize, and Kelly has raised funding for her advanced CT-scanning work. Read more...
		June 2009 - Palaeobiology Masters student wins prizes Sarah Keenan, an MSc student in Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences, has been awarded a research grant by the Geological Society of America to fund field work in Montana and Texas. This is one of several awards she has accumulated during her year in Bristol: others include some $2000 from the Geological Society of America, and a grant from the University of Bristol Alumni Fund, all to cover costs of field work and laboratory geochemical analyses. The GSA award was made in October 2009, and is reported here. Read more...
		November 2008 - Bristol MSci student publishes study on fossil whales Felix Marx, a final-year MSci student in the Department of Earth Sciences has just published his first paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, a journal of international significance. Felix looked at the fossil records of whales, seals, and sea cows, and compared the fossil data to the availability of appropriate rock; he finds evidence for some geological control of the fossil record signal, but enough of a biological signal emerges to be used for evolutionary studies. Read more...
		September 2008 - Mass extinctions and the slow rise of the dinosaurs Dinosaurs survived two mass extinctions and 50 million years before taking over the world and dominating ecosystems, according to new research published this week. Reporting in Biology Letters, Steve Brusatte, in his last blast as an MSc student in the Department, together with colleagues, show that dinosaurs did not proliferate immediately after they originated, but that their rise was a slow and complicated event, and driven by two mass extinctions. Read more...
		September 2008 - Bristol MSc student sheds new light on dinosaurian origins A new study shows that the dinosaurs originated in two steps, and that they did not compete in a straghtforward way with precursor groups. Steve Brusatte, while an MSc student in the Department, worked with Mike Benton, Marcello Ruta, and Graeme Lloyd to investigate the disparity and morphospace occupation, or overall variability, of dinosaurs and their main competitors, the crurotarsans, through the Late Triassic. The dinosaurs took over some herbivore niches, but then remained at low disparity for 25 million years, before the majority of crurotarsans died out. Read more...
		July 2008 - Was it a bird or was it a plane? Interdisciplinary studies involving Bristol's departments of Earth Sciences and Aerospace Engineering have given a better understanding of the way that kuehneosaurs - a group of extinct reptiles - used their ribs to fly. Koen Stein built models and tested them in a wind tunnel whilst he was studying for an MSc in Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences. Read more...
		May 2008 - Former MSc student names the 'Danish blue' parrot David Waterhouse, who completed the Bristol MSc in 2002, and then went to Dublin to study for his PhD on fossil parrots, has just described a new parrot, Mopsitta tanta from the Eocene Fur Formation, some 55 million years old, of Denmark. The paper, in Palaeontology, has attracted a great deal of interest because of the bizarre concept of a Danish parrot, and obvious parallels with Monty Python's famous 'dead parrot' sketch, featuring the Norwegian blue parrot who was lying on his back because he was 'pining for the fjords'. Read more...
		February 2008 - Bristol MSc student names two new dinosaurs from North Africa MSc student Steve Brusatte, and his former supervisor, Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, describe two new dinosaurs, Kryptops, the oldest abelisauroid theropod, and Eocarcharia, the oldest carcharodontosaurid theropod, both from Niger in the Sahara, and both indicating the origins of their respective groups in Africa and surround lands. Read more...
		December 2007 - Another bumper year for publications by Bristol MSc students The year 2007 has marked a record, with 14 publications by current and former MSc and MSci students. The Bristol Palaeobiology and Biodiversity Research group published a total of 61 papers in 2007, of which the contribution by Masters students is 21 percent. Read more...
		December 2007 - Bristol MSc student identifies gigantic new dinosaur Steve Brusatte, who has just completed the Bristol MSc in Palaeobiology, has described a new species of Carcharodontosaurus, a huge predator from Morocco. Carcharodontosaurus roamed North Africa 100 million years ago, and it was larger than Tyrannosaurus rex. Read more...
		November 2007 - Bristol MSc student named as 'rising star' Each year, The Observer newspaper identifies 500 'rising stars', young people they feel will go far. In the 2007/8 survey, Colin Barras, who completed the MSc in Palaeobiology in 2002, and then went to Birmingham to complete his PhD, and is now a science writer, was named in the top 50 rising stars in science and innovation. Read more...
		June 2006 - Record number of MSc students win PhD places Most years, about one-third of the MSc in Palaeobiology students obtain PhD positions - of course, not everyone wants to go this way. By June 2006, ten of the MSc class of 2005-6 had won funded PhD positions from Cambridge (Harvard, USA) to Cambridge (Cambridge University, UK). Here are some of the top students of the 2005-6 cohort, shortly before leaving for their new positions. See the photo enlarged...
		October 2005 - New dinosaur expert joins the Bristol team Dr Emily Rayfield joined the staff in 2005. She is a functional morphologist, and applies novel engineering approaches to the skulls of dinosaurs and other vertebrates. Emily supervises a range of projects on the functional design of dinosaurs and other extinct vertebrates. She teaches a new Masters unit on functional morphology and biomechanics, which ran for the first time in the 2005/6 session. To find out more about Emily's spectacular finite element analyses of theropod skulls go here.
		October 2004 - Expert on foraminifera and climate change joins the Bristol team Dr Daniela Schmidt joined the Department in 2004 as a NERC Postdoctoral Fellow, and in 2006 she won a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. She supervises projects and contributes teaching on microfossils and climate change. All postdocs contribute to the teaching and project supervision in the MSc.
		October 2003 - Phil Donoghue moves to Bristol Dr Phil Donoghue was appointed in 2003 as a new lecturer, and he is involved in a variety of MSc teaching and project supervision. Phil is best known for his innovative research on early vertebrate evolution, and he is extending his work to look at evo-devo questions and especially the exceptionally preserved embryos from around the Cambrian Explosion in China.
		October 2002 - New programmes in palaeontological laboratory techniques Mr Remmert Schouten, manager of the Palaeontology Laboratories in Bristol, and a key member of the team driving the Bristol Dinosaur Project, gives all MSc students extensive hands-on training in palaeontological laboratory techniques. Remmert has worked in France, the Netherlands and Australia, before coming to Bristol, and he participates in dinosaur expeditions to Morocco, Portugal, and France - some with places for MSc students. For particularly enthusiastic students, Remmert offers one-to-one training in the lab. preparing bones of the basal sauropodomorph dinosaur Thecodontosaurus out of the rock.
		October 2001 - New programme in Research methods The core unit on 'Research methods' covers a range of practical skills in palaeontological research, from preparing dinosaur bones to photographing fossils, from proper field recording practice to working in museums. We have also enhanced the 'Scientific communication' core unit, adding a large section on 'Public understanding of science', working with the media, with contributions from employees of the BBC Natural History unit and from the renowned hands-on science centre, @t-Bristol.
		October 2000 - MSc students publish their work A further key enhancement is the increasing focus on ensuring student projects are published. Some six or seven projects by former students are published each year, and we have redesigned the protocol and supervision so that even more come to a published outcome.