Michel Laurin

As an undergraduate, he worked in the laboratory of Robert L. Carroll and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto under the direction of Robert R. Reisz; his thesis concerned the osteology of seymouriamorphs. His 1991 review of diapsid phylogeny provided the broadest review of the subject up to that date. In 1995, Laurin and Reisz coauthored a widely cited article providing evidence that the synapsids are the sister group of all other amniotes. He later worked on untangling the phylogeny of the Stegocephalia, a group with a notoriously difficult phylogeny. He later moved to France; since 1998, he has been a CNRS researcher at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. a journal in the Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences family, as well as being a reviewing editor for the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. He has been a key contributor to the International Society for Phylogenetic Nomenclature, where he served as president 2008–2009 and as secretary 2010–2011.