Grant recipients Hans de Bruijn Fund

Recent awards: what experiences have recipients of grants from the Hans de Bruijn Fund had? Here they tell their stories.

Arthur Maréchal

is researching the Late Cretaceous fauna period for his doctoral research. 

My PhD research focuses on Bentiaba, a site in Angola known for its exceptionally rich marine vertebrate fauna, particularly mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. I am studying this Late Cretaceous fauna – including fish – in order to better describe and understand it, and to reconstruct the environment in which these animals lived at the time. An important part of this is the use of the TEX₈₆ proxy on sediment samples, which can be used to reconstruct past sea surface temperatures and the pH of the ocean.

Thanks to the support of the Hans de Bruijn Fund, I was able to spend a week in the Netherlands conducting research. During this trip, I carried out TEX₈₆ analyses at Utrecht University, which are essential for placing the fossils from Bentiaba in their environmental context. In addition, the stay provided ample opportunity to exchange ideas with Dutch students and palaeontologists. I also spent time at the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, where I enjoyed working with the fossil preparators of the DinoLab team.

The support also made it possible to visit the Maastricht Natural History Museum. There, I saw, among other things, an impressive mosasaur reconstruction based in part on material from Bentiaba. The museum's collections display a fossil fauna very similar to that of Bentiaba, which provided a valuable opportunity for direct comparison and further exploration of my research.

This research stay was made possible thanks to the Hans de Bruijn Fund. I hope that this experience will lead to meaningful scientific results and will contribute to inspiring future generations in both the Netherlands and Angola.

Livia Snelder

did a palaeontological thesis project for her Bachelor's degree in Earth Sciences.

Thanks in part to the Hans de Bruijn Fund, I was able to do a cool palaeontological Bachelor's thesis project, and I am very grateful for that.

During my project, I researched the fossilised teeth and tusks of vertebrates from the Late Permian period. These animals, known as therapsids, were the early precursors of mammals, and just before the disastrous Permian–Triassic mass extinction event, therapsids were the dominant animal group on Earth. We still know relatively little about this group of animals, which is why studying them is important.

My research focused on two groups: Dicynodonts (herbivores) and Gorgonopsians (carnivores), to see whether these animals already hibernated, an evolutionarily advanced trait for the Permian period. This was to cope with the extreme seasonality and climatic conditions of their habitat during the Late Permian. Grinding plates were made from the fossilised teeth and tusks, and I examined the internal structure and growth lines in the dentine of these teeth using histological research. This is where information about an animal's growth and metabolism is stored. I found cyclical hibernation deposits, which are the oldest evidence of hibernation found to date.

Thanks to the financial support I received from the Hans de Bruijn Fund, I was able to travel to Portugal for a weekend to collect the fossil teeth I would be working with and to meet the Portuguese professor I worked with, Ricardo Araújo, to discuss the project with him. This would never have been possible otherwise, and for this I am very grateful to the Hans de Bruijn Fund!

Daan van den Elzen

is pursuing a double master's degree in veterinary medicine and earth sciences at Utrecht University.

My master's thesis focuses on pathological bones of Triceratops from the collections of Naturalis Biodiversity Centre and the Eastern Wyoming Nature Centre. In collaboration with the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Geosciences at Utrecht University and Naturalis, I will perform CT (computed tomography) scans of the individual bones to investigate whether they are pathological and to determine what disease process has taken place. In addition, the histology of some of the bones will be examined using grinding plate microscopy. I will also examine two fused Triceratops vertebrae.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to travel to Wyoming, United States, to view these vertebrae, visit the site where they were found, and join the excavation team at the Wyoming Dinosaur Centre. The work was hard, but incredibly enjoyable and educational. To cover the costs of my trip, I received a grant from the Hans de Bruijn Fund, for which I am extremely grateful. For me, this is a dream come true, and I am extremely happy that there are funds that make this possible for me and other future palaeontologists.

Mathieu Boisville

is doing a PhD project at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. In September 2023, with support from the Hans de Bruijn Fund, he visited the fossil walrus collections in the Netherlands.

“The overall aim of my visit to the Netherlands was to increase my database with the large number of extant but also fossil walruses (Odobenus rosmarus), and fossil species Ontocetus emmonsi the Dutch collections have to offer. My aim is to study mandibles and skulls, and compare them with material from Japan. This visit allowed me to record landmarks and semi-landmarks, using tpsDig software, and to apply geometric morphometric analyses (e.g. Procrustes ANOVA) with R Studio, in order to compare different populations of fossil walruses, to better understand their past diversity through time and space.

I spent my first two days in the NNM collections with the aim of adding to the large number of specimens. The next day I went to Utrecht, to visit the collections of the UMU (Universiteitsmuseum Utrecht) to observe a very special specimen of Odobenus rosmarus, described by Rutten at the beginning of the 20th century. The next week I visited the Naturalis Biodiversity Center collections in Leiden, which also has a large collection of specimens of the extant Odobenus rosmarus, but also some very interesting fossil specimens of Ontocetus emmonsi, which after observations may actually belong to a quite different taxon whose manuscript I am currently preparing. Finally, I visited the collections of the Zeeuws Museum in Middelburg, where I was able to observe two well-preserved skulls; a complete skull of Odobenus rosmarus from late Pleistocene deposits and material of Ontocetus emmonsi from the early Pleistocene (Gelasian).

I would like to sincerely thank you once again for providing me with this invaluable assistance, in addition to the help that my university also offers me. I will keep you informed of the progress of my PhD thesis, with regard to all these Dutch specimens.”