2025 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Meeting

The 2025 meeting of SVP in Birmingham England (home to Ozzy Osbourne) was a very significant meeting for the Lauer Foundation. Given the nature of the Foundation’s collection we tend to collaborate with many European researchers. This was a perfect opportunity to meet with so many of our collaborators who do not normally attend SVP when it is held in the US. We met Dr. Christian Klug and were delighted that a paper documenting an ammonite with soft parts in our collection was published during the meeting. We met Dr. Sam Cooper from Stuttgart and discussed a research visit this year. We had a round table meeting of two large shark research labs, the UK shark team and the Vienna Shark team headed by Dr. Jürgen Kriwet. A research project was planned combining efforts of both teams on a Hybodus shark from Eichstätt Germany. Dr. Chris Duffin and Dr. Sebastian Stumpf will lead this project. We brought several Mazon Creek specimens to the meeting to deliver to Dr. Thomas Clements. A possible research visit is expected this year. We also brought four arachnid specimens for Dr. Paul Seldon for a project. Denis Theda and Adam Fitch had a poster and presentation. Skye McDavid had an excellent poster on our pterosaurs.

We had a chance to visit our friend Dr. Dave Hone in London and were given signed copy of his latest book. The Foundation was well represented with Posters from several collaborators and several presentations. All in all we were well represented.

This meeting presented a huge step forward for the Foundation and really demonstrated the progress the Foundation has made since our first SVP meeting in 2014.