Last July, Jonathan Pople successfully submitted and defended his Master’s thesis in Earth Sciences at the University of Lausanne. He carried out his thesis work over one year at the ANOM Lab, studying the ecology of giant radiodonts and other arthropods from the Early Ordovician Fezouata Shale of Morocco, and notably demonstrated that living radiodonts often carried hitchhiking brachiopods on their oversized carapaces, not unlike barnacles found on whales today. Jonathan’s work was recently awarded with 3 prizes: the 2023 Best Master Thesis Award from the Swiss Geological Society for the best MSc thesis in Earth Sciences completed at a Swiss academic institution; the Prize Auguste Lombard 2023 from the Ecole Lémanique des Sciences de la Terre (shared between the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva) rewarding both the excellence of his Master’s thesis in Geology and the quality of his university studies, and the 2023 Master’s thesis Faculty Prize from the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment at the University of Lausanne.
