Dorien de Vries

Witte vrouw met bruin haar in een knotje, lachend naar camera

I am a palaeontologist fascinated by mammal diversity through time. I am particularly interested in the effects of climate change, competition, and extinctions on mammal diversity over millions of years. My research focuses on fossil mammals from Africa and South America. I use fieldwork, microCT scans of fossil teeth, and phylogenetic comparative methods.

Keywords

Mammal diversity, Climate change, Palaeontology, X-ray computed tomography, Fieldwork, Palaeogene

Dr Dorien de Vries

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Vertebrate evolution, development and ecology - VEDE

@paleoDorien
Google Scholar
Bluesky
LinkedIn
dorien.devries@naturalis.nl

52.170141660985, 5.3173828125
Marker
Leaflet © OpenStreetMap contributors © CARTO

Research
interest

My research is funded by the NWO (Dutch Research Council) through a VENI grant titled 'Extinction as a reset button: Quantifying mammalian diversification through global climate change'.

VENI project: In the future, climate change is predicted to be a major contributor to biodiversity loss, which is alarming. Slow-growing animals, such as mammals, are particularly affected by this. 34 million years ago, global climate changed abruptly and disruptively. We know this profoundly impacted mammals in the northern hemisphere. But how were southern mammals affected, including those in the tropics? By studying fossil mammals from the Southern hemisphere, I will quantify their responses to climate change, the long-term effects of this, and identify ecological factors driving subsequent recovery. My results will provide global, long-term insights into mammalian response to climate change.

Witte vrouw die met loepje naar iets kleins kijkt met een rivier en groene bomen op achtergrond.

Current
Topics

A selection of the topics I am working on currently:

  • Marsupial dental topography and its relation to diet
  • Diversification of South American native ungulates (or 'SANUs')
  • Undescribed mammal fossils from fieldwork in Kenya
  • Undescribed mammal fossils from fieldwork in Peru

Media coverage

A selection of media coverage of my research:

Screenshot van headline met tekst: game changing research reveals full genome squences of hundreds of primates

Een screenshot van een headline met de tekst: Climate-driven extinction made mammal's teeth less weird.

 

Een screenshot van een CNN headline met de tekst: crew of prehistoric monkeys rafter acrcoss the atlantic to south america

Key publications

  • De Vries, D., Winchester, J.M., Fulwood, E.L., St. Clair, E.M., Boyer, D.M. (2024) Dental topography of prosimian premolars predicts diet: a comparison in premolar and molar dietary classification accuracies. American Journal of Biological Anthropology 185 (1): e24995. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24995
  • Seiffert, E.R., Heritage, S., de Vries, D., Sallam, H.M., Vitek, N.S., Aoron, E., Princehouse, P. (2024) Oldest record of a crown anomaluroid rodent from sub-Saharan Africa: A new genus and species from the early Oligocene Topernawi Formation of northern Kenya. Historical Biology 1:11. https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2024.2370015
  • De Vries, D., Janiak, M.C., Batista, R., Boubli, J.P., Goodhead, I.B., Ridgway, E., Boyer, D.M., St. Clair, E., Beck, R.M.D. (2024) Comparison of dental topography of marmosets and tamarins (Callitrichidae) to other platyrrhine primates using a novel freeware pipeline. Journal of Mammalian Evolution 31 (12). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-024-09704-9
  • Jensen, A., Swift, F., de Vries, D. [11 authors] Guschanski, K. (2023) Large-scale phylogenomics uncovers a complex evolutionary history and extensive ancestral gene flow in an African primate radiation. Molecular Biology and Evolution 40 (12): msad247. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msad247
  • Kuderna, L.F.K. [22 authors] de Vries, D., [61 authors] Rogers, J., Kai-How Farh, K. (2023) Identification of constrained sequence elements across 243 primate genomes. Nature 625: 735-742. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06798-8
  • Kuderna, L.F.K. [12 authors] de Vries, D., [58 authors] Rogers, J., Kai-How Farh, K., Marques- Bonet, T. (2023) A global catalog of whole-genome diversity from 233 primate species. Science 380(6648): 906-913. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7829
  • Gao, H., Hamp, T., [29 authors], de Vries, D., [62 authors] Rogers, J., Marques-Bonet, T., Kai-How Farh, K. (2023) The landscape of tolerated genetic variation in humans and primates. Science 380(6648): eabn8153. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn8197
  • De Vries, D., and Beck, R.M.D. (2023) Twenty-five well-justified fossil calibrations for primate divergences. Palaeontologia Electronica 26(1):a8. https://doi.org/10.26879/1249
  • Beck, R.M.D., de Vries, D., Janiak, M.C., Goodhead, I.B., Boubli, J.P. (2023) Total evidence phylogeny of platyrrhine primates and a comparison of undated and tip-dating approaches. Journal of Human Evolution 174: 103293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2022.103293grafiek met drie lijnen die uitstervingsgolf aantonen in Africa onder primaten en rodents
  • De Vries, D., Heritage, S.W., Borths, M.R., Sallam, H.M., Seiffert, E.R. (2021) Widespread loss of mammalian lineage and dietary diversity in the early Oligocene of Afro-Arabia. Communications Biology 4(1): 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02707-9
  • Campbell, K.E., O'Sullivan, P.B., Fleagle, J.G., de Vries, D., and Seiffert, E.R. (2021) An Early Oligocene age for the oldest monkeys and rodents of South America. PNAS 118(37). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105956118
  • Seiffert, E.R., Tejedor, M.F., Fleagle, J.G., Novo, N.M., Cornejo, F.M., Bond, M., de Vries, D., Campbell, K.E. (2020) A parapithecid stem anthropoid of African origin in the Paleogene of South America. Science 368: 194-197. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba1135 

All publications