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

Contact

Build. B35 – 3rd floor, north wing – Room 408
gildas.merceron@univ-poitiers.fr

Iconic publications

Francisco, A., Blondel, C., Brunetière, N., Ramdarshan, A., Merceron, G., 2018. Enamel surface topography analysis for diet discrimination. A methodology to enhance and select discriminative parameters. Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties 6, 015002. https://doi.org/10.1088/2051-672X/aa9dd3.

Berlioz, E., Azorit, C., Blondel, C., Ruiz, M.S.T., Merceron, G., 2017. Deer in an arid habitat: dental microwear textures track feeding adaptability. Hystrix – the Italian Journal of Mammalogy. https://doi.org/10.4404/hystrix-28.2-12048.

Ramdarshan, A., Blondel, C., Gautier, D., Surault, J., Merceron, G., 2017. Overcoming sampling issues in dental tribology: Insights from an experimentation on sheep. Palaeontologia Electronica. https://doi.org/10.26879/762.

Calandra, I., Merceron, G., 2016. Dental microwear texture analysis in mammalian ecology: DMTA in ecology. Mammal Review 46, 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12063.

Konidaris, G.E., Koufos, G.D., Kostopoulos, D.S., Merceron, G., 2016. Taxonomy, biostratigraphy and palaeoecology of Choerolophodon (Proboscidea, Mammalia) in the Miocene of SE Europe-SW Asia: implications for phylogeny and biogeography. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 14, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2014.985339.

Merceron, G., Ramdarshan, A., Blondel, C., Boisserie, J.-R., Brunetiere, N., Francisco, A., Gautier, D., Milhet, X., Novello, A., Pret, D., 2016. Untangling the environmental from the dietary: dust does not matter. Proceeding Royal Society of London. B. 283, 20161032. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.1032