Josh Laird successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled "Ordovician trilobite communities: End-Ordovician mass extinction beta diversity collapse, habitat occupancy dynamics, and insights from the Eleanor River Formation (Floian) fauna of Canada," on Friday, July 17, 2026. Congratulations, Josh!

Ethan Bley successfully defended his MS thesis, "Middle and Upper Ordovician encrinurid trilobites from the Maquoketa Formation (Katian) of Iowa and the Table Cove Formation (Darriwilian) of Newfoundland," on April 17th, 2026. Congratulations Ethan!

Sebastien Mure-Ravaud successfully defended his MS thesis, "Cambrian (Guzhangian) Trilobites from the Weeks Formation of western Utah, USA," on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. Congratulations Sebastien!

Titouan Camus has joined the lab to do a PhD tentatively focused on bringing to bear new silicified material, particularly early life history material, to the problems of higher trilobite phylogeny. Titouan did an MS split between Catherine Crônier's lab at the University of Lille, France, and Graham Budd's lab at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Ethan Bley, who has been in the lab for the past two years as an Office for Undergraduate Research Fellow, has joined now as an MS student. Ethan will be working on the early Tremadocian silicified faunas of the Barn Canyon Member of the House Formation in western Utah.