Dr. Hesham Sallam

Dr. Hesham Sallam

• Dr. Hesham Sallam – Biography

Director of Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (MUVP), Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt,

Despite decades of exploration and numerous paleobiogeographic scenarios put forth to characterize Gondwanan and African faunas, the African Late Cretaceous fossil record remains largely unknown and hinders adequate testing of these hypotheses. Here, we report a very rare and by far the most complete nonavian dinosaur from the post-Cenomanian Late Cretaceous (Campanian 73 Ma) of the entire continent of Africa. The close phylogenetic relationship of the new Egyptian dinosaur with other Late Cretaceous Laurasian titanosaurians provides the first unambiguous evidence that clearly demonstrates affinities had indeed existed between northern African and Eurasian faunas, revealing a previously suspected but largely untested biogeographic province.

Dr. Sallam received his bachelor degree (1997) from the Department of Geology at Mansoura University in Egypt then he completed his Ph.D. in 2010 at the University of Oxford (UK). In addition, he was a visiting scholar at Stony Brook University, Ohio University, Denver Museum of Nature and Science and Duke University, USA for a year (2014/2017). Over the course of last 10 years, he have been conducting paleontological research on the vertebrate fossils of Afro-Arabia. The work resulted in a series of publications in high profile journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Nature Ecology and Evolution, Nature Communications, PLoS ONE, PeerJ, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, and Palaeontology.

His important contribution to Egyptian paleontology is that he founded the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology (MUVP), the only high-level vertebrate paleontology research unit in the Middle East, a combined research, outreach, and conservation endeavor based out of Mansoura University, Egypt. MUVP’s most significant accomplishment was the discovery, recovery, and description of the large sauropod dinosaur Mansourasaurus, which was found in the Dakhla Oasis area of Egypt. This new species revealed previously unappreciated biotic links between the Afro-Arabian and Eurasian landmasses during the close of the Cretaceous period, around 73 million years ago.

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