“Jamie” Michel Schmidt
Section Arthropoda varia
I am doing my PhD in the Arthropoda varia workgroup led by Roland Melzer at the SNSB – Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (ZSM). The DFG-funded project (ME 2683/10-1) represents a German-Sino-Cooperation, being also related to the Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology, Yunnan University, Kunming, China (Prof. Dr. Yu Liu) and the Haug Lab (Prof. Dr. Joachim T. Haug and Dr. Carolin Haug, Department of Biology II, LMU Munich). My research interest is the morphology and paleobiology of Cambrian (ca. 520 mya old) arthropods of the Chengjiang biota of China.
I work with several virtual palaeontology techniques (micro-CT) and 3D reconstruction and modulation programs (Amira, Drishti, MeshLab, Blender, Maya) to look for general aspects of the fossil’s hidden morphology, sexual dimorphic characters, intraspecific variation and ontogenetic patterns. Furthermore, I will particularly focus on limbs and appendages being most often the critical part when analyzing the ventral morphology of fossilized invertebrates.