Fossil Detectives: Amanda Kier

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Hi, I’m Amanda Kier, I’m Researcher Assistant Producer on Fossil Detectives. My background is I’m a zoologist, though I did a post-doc in palaeontology. I’ve been interested in fossils since I was really, really small; I was mad about dinosaurs when I was a kiddie, and then when I grew up a bit I realised that it wasn’t just dinosaurs that were cool, that invertebrates and other fossils were really interesting as well.

So my favourite fossil is the ammonite, like this one. I used to work on living cephalopod molluscs, ammonites are the extinct versions, and I think they’re just, they’re really beautiful, they’re very aesthetically pleasing, the curves of the shell and all these interesting patterns you can see when the shell wears away, and also I’m interested in their biology and working out what, how they would have been when they were alive, how similar they are to modern cephalopods.