Nizar Ibrahim

Nizar Ibrahim (born 8 September 1982) is a German-Moroccan vertebrate palaeontologist and comparative anatomist. He was a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. Ibrahim has led several expeditions to Africa's Sahara and is notable for his research on fossil vertebrates from the Kem Kem Group, including pterosaurs, crocodyliforms, and dinosaurs. In recent years, research led by Ibrahim radically changed ideas about the morphology and the lifestyle of one of the largest predatory dinosaurs, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Ibrahim also has interests in bioinformatics and contributed to the NSF-funded Phenoscape project. He regularly engages with the public and is a speaker with the National Geographic Speakers Bureau. S. aegyptiacus skeletal reconstruction in swimming posture (prior to the discovery of the tail fin)

Biography

Youth and education Nizar Ibrahim was born on 8 September 1982 in West Berlin, West Germany. He has German and Moroccan ancestry, with his grandfather being the third Prime Minister of Morocco, Abdallah Ibrahim. Since his childhood, he has been very enthusiastic about animals and their diversity, anatomy, and evolution. He also loved fiction and nonfiction stories of adventures around the world. At 5 years old, he decided that he was going to become a palaeontologist while reading a book on dinosaurs.

He obtained a Bachelor of science in geology and biology from the University of Bristol in 2006. In 2011, he obtained his PhD from the University College Dublin's School of Medicine and Medical Science. He carried out his postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago for four years. In Morocco, he works with a number of Moroccan researchers and students based at Hassan II University.

Awards and recognition

In 2014, he was selected as a member of National Geographic's Emerging Explorer Program. In 2015, he was named a TED Fellow. In 2019, his Spinosaurus discovery was named one of the Top 20 Scientific Discoveries of the Decade by National Geographic.

Selected publications