ALEXANDRA VAN DER GEER

The last two years I was full-time working on a reference handbook on extinct island faunas with own funding. The result was published as Evolution of Island Mammals: Adaptation and Extinction of Placental Mammals on Islands by Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK. My co-authors are John de Vos, George Lyras and Michael Dermitzakis. The various Chapters were reviewed by specialists in the field. For more info, click here. The book is dedicated to the memory of Paul Yves Sondaar (1934-2003), the founder of paleo-island studies in the Netherlands and in Greece.





Evolution of a hypothetical island fauna. Drawing George Lyras

In 2008 I participated in a project to make the Museum visible on the web. My part consisted of writing all content pages (in English) for the website, design the general lay-out, select appropriate images and translate the collection database into English and French. For the end result, see the new homepage of the Museum. I also participated in the development of an educational DVD for the Museum for children. Another recent project (2007) was the digitizing of the collection of the local Natural History Museum at Vrissa, Lesvos (Greece). The project consisted of two parts: filling a database with relevant information and a digital image of the specimens and the design and development of a website. Fossils form the major part of the Vrissa collection. Minor parts are the minerals and rocks, the dried plants and the stuffed birds and mammals. I was involved in both parts of the project. For the database, I organized the data, specified the required fields and made a translation to the xml file. For the website, I wrote the texts for the palaeontological section, including descriptions of the extinct animals and their evolution, both popular as well as scientific. Below are some examples from the database.

Partly with funding from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Museum of Paleontology and Geology), I wrote several shorter and longer texts on various paleontological subjects, e.g. Paradolichopithecus (a Plio-Pleistocene papionin), Candiacervus (a Pleistocene deer), and island faunas, apart from teaching activities (2005 and 2006). I also actively participated in the Museum's summer fieldwork, e.g. on Lesvos and Crete.




F-site of Vatera (Lesvos, Greece)

Gerani 1-4 (Crete, Greece)

Katharo Plain (Crete, Greece)

Andros island (Greece)