MERCERON Gildas
CNRS Senior Researcher
Laboratory director
Main research question
My research aims at exploring the ecology of mammals to assess the underlying mechanisms of their evolutionary history. This also provides inescapable proxies to depict the available vegetal resources needed to reconstruct past ecosystems and their changes through time.
Topics of study
I focus my research on the diets of extinct mammals, including primates, by the means of experimental approaches, models of modern communities and dental archives analysis.
For the last decade, I focus my research on the ecology of Western Eurasian and African primates from the Middle Miocene onwards.
Fieldworks
Since 2010 onwards, I pilot together with Prof. D. S. Kostopoulos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) yearly fieldworks on early Pleistocene outcrops in northern Greece.
Project management
- Principal investigator ANR DIET-Scratches 2018-
- Principal investigator ANR TRIDENT 2013-2017
Co-Pi with D.S. Kostopoulos National Geographic Foundation 2016-2017
Other responsibilities
- Geology Committee Member Section 35/36
- Geobios Associate Editor
External Collaborations
- School of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
- Polish Mammal Research Institute, Białowieża, Poland
- Institute of Geosciences, University of Mainz, Germany
- ISEM, Montpellier, France
- Institute for Studies of Landscape and Human Evolution, Bournemouth University, UK
- CR2P, MNHN, Paris, France
Publications
Symposium
Contact
- Build. B35 – 3rd floor, north wing – Room 408
- gildas.merceron@univ-poitiers.fr