Terranova Edoardo

IMG 7787250250

edoardo.terranova@phd.unipi.it

Ph.D. Student in Geoscience and Environment at the Earth Science Department at University of Pisa. My PhD project aims to address the delay in the preservation of paleontological geosites by professionals in the field, developing measures to enhance the "ex situ" heritage (specimens stored in museum collections) and measures to protect the "in situ" heritage (outcropping or sub-outcropping fossiliferous rocks), with the goal of integrating ex situ and in situ heritage into a comprehensive conservation and valorisation plan.
Pisa Province and its paleontological heritage represent an ideal “open-air laboratory” for the implementation of this project. The approach will include both basic research and applied palaeontology and the main research activities will focus on:
- the revision and improvement of the atlas of Palaeontological Sites of the Province of Pisa;
- the elaboration of strategies of "preventive palaeontology" aimed at the conservation of the in situ heritage using GIS software;
- the digitisation of the main fossil outcrops and the corresponding ex situ palaeontological assets using structured light scanning and drone photogrammetry;
- the promotion of palaeontological localities of prime national or international interest through the collection and analysis of new fossils and the revision of historical specimens.
My academic background has mainly focused on taphonomy, specifically the preservation of organic tissues such as feathers in fossils. This was the main topic of my B.Sc. degree and M.Sc. at “Sapienza” University of Rome, first with a thesis on “Fossil evidence of feathers origin and evolution during the Mesozoic” and then with the thesis “The fossil vulture (Gyps fulvus) from the Late Pleistocene of Alban Hills (Latium, Italy): organic tissues analysis and taphonomy”.
After the University, I worked in different museums as a collection manager. During the fellowship at MUST (Museo Universitario di Scienze della Terra) in the Department of Earth Sciences of Sapienza University in Rome (Italy), I worked in the Paleontological collection, in particular I dealt with cataloguing the quaternary mammal fossils. Then I participated in the Regional competition TornoSubito Call for the Latium Region (Italy), with a project about the conservation and cataloguing of natural history collection in Italy and the role of naturalist in XXI century and I made a Work Experience at MUSE - Science Museum Trento and at Museo Civico di Zoologia di Roma. In my last experience at the Museo Civico di Zoologia di Roma, as a volunteer inside the Servizio Civile Universale (Civil Service), I worked on the Museum collections as a collection manager and a museum conservator. I have carried out an activity of monitoring, review and updating of systematics and taxonomic information of specimens. This work took place through the consultation of different online catalogs as paleobiodb.org and gbif.org.
My additional interests include Scientific Illustration and Science communication. 

RESEARCH INTEREST 
  • Palaeobiology
  • Palaeoecology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Taphonomy
  • Systematics
  • Vertebrate Palaeontology
  • Comparative Anatomy
  • Natural History Collection
  • Collection management
  • Scientific Illustration

Research project: Preventive paleontology: the Pisa Province territory as a case study for the conservation and promotion of paleontological heritage.

Supervisors:

Dr Alberto Collareta (DST-UNIPI)
Professor Giovanni Bianucci (DST-UNIPI)

Edoardo Terranova

Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra
Università di Pisa
Via Santa Maria 53
56126 Pisa
Italia

back to top