Dr Yves Candela
Specific responsibility: Curation of fossil invertebrate and plant collections with particular responsibilities for fossil Brachiopoda.
Research interests/expertise: Brachiopoda taxonomy; biodiversification and biogeography of the Ordovician marine faunas; Cladistical analysis of the Strophomenida brachiopods.
Dr Candela studied geology at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale in Brest (France), but undertook his final year (Maîtrise, French equivalent to BSc) at the National University of Ireland, Galway as part of the European-funded ERASMUS programme. He specialised in palaeontology with a PhD on Ordovician brachiopods from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, at NUI Galway. He joined the National Museum Scotland in 2005, initially as Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology, and took his current position in 2010.
His expertise in the field of palaeontology focuses on, but is not restricted to, the study of brachiopods, mainly from the Ordovician and Silurian periods (485 to 419 million years ago). Brachiopods are a group of marine organisms that originated more than 500 million years ago but are still present today. The Ordovician period is critical in the history of life because it witnessed an explosion of life nicknamed the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), occurring within a short time span of 25 million years. Dr Candela is co-leader of the UNESCO-funded IGCP 735 project: Rocks and the Rise of Ordovician Life: Filling knowledge gaps in the Early Palaeozoic Biodiversification.
His research is specimen-based (fieldwork and museum collections) and interests range from taxonomy and systematics (description, naming and study of relationships of organisms) to the diversification and biogeography of fossil marine faunas (using fossils and especially brachiopods to reconstruction the relative position of palaeo-continents and the environments in which they thrived).
Dr Candela is also interested in promoting palaeontology to non-specialist audiences through visiting schools and participating in science festivals.
Current research collaborations include:
- Prof. David Harper (Durham University)
- Dr. Bernard Mottequin (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels)
Selected publications
Candela, Y. & Sendino, C. 2023. New machaeridian data from the Upper Ordovician of Scotland: palaeoecological and global palaeobiogeographical implications. Geobios. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geobios.2022.10.006
Chen, D., Huang, B. & Candela, Y. 2023. Evolutionary trends in trimerellid brachiopods. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 617:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2023.111472
Chen, D., Huang, B. & Candela, Y. 2023. Revision of the Llandovery (lower Silurian) trimerellide brachiopod Yidurella in South China. Palaeoworld. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palwor.2023.01.001
Saleh, F., Vaucher, R., Vidal, M., El Hariri, K., Laibl, L., Daley, A.C., Gutiérrez‑Marco, J.C., Candela, Y., Harper, D.A.T., Ortega‑Hernández, J., Ma, X., Rida, A., Vizcaïno, D. & Lefebvre, B. 2022. New fossil assemblages from the Early Ordovician Fezouata Biota. Scientific Reports 12: 20773. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-25000-z
Candela, Y. & Mottequin, B. 2022. Tremadocian and Floian (Ordovician) linguliformean brachiopods from the Stavelot–Venn Massif (Avalonia; Belgium and Germany). Geologica Belgica 25: https://doi.org/10.20341/gb.2021.007
Thompson, J.R., Cotton, L.J., Candela Y., Kutscher, M., Reich, M. & Bottjer, D.J. 2022. The Ordovician diversification of sea urchins: systematics of the Bothriocidaroida (Echinodermata: Echinoidea). Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 19: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2022.2042408
Candela, Y., Marion, J-M., Servais, T., Wang, W., Wolvers, M. & Mottequin, B. 2021. New linguliformean brachiopods from the lower Tremadocian (Ordovician) of the Brabant Massif, Belgium, with comments on contemporaneous faunas from the Stavelot-Venn Massif. Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia 127 (2): 383-395. https://doi.org/10.13130/2039-4942/15793
Botting, J. P., Candela, Y., Carrió, V. & Crighton, W. B. 2019. A new hexactinellid sponge from the Silurian of the Pentland Hills (Scotland) with similarities to extant rossellids. Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755691019000045.
Candela, Y. 2015. Evolution of Laurentian brachiopod faunas during the Ordovician Phanerozoic sea level maximum. Earth-Science Reviews 141: 27-44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2014.11.012.
Candela, Y. 2003. Late Ordovician brachiopods from the Bardahessiagh Formation of Pomeroy, Ireland. Monograph of the Palaeontographical Society, London: 95 pages, 12 plates. (Publ. No. 618, part of Vol. 156 for 2002).