Aidan Littleton Has a Passion for Paleontology

Aidan Littleton Has a Passion for Paleontology

Aidan Littleton is a junior with a passion for paleontology. Relatedly, he began working with faculty on paleontology projects during his sophomore year and has conducted research in the Stigall and Sumrall labs with plans to continue engaging with additional faculty in the diverse UT paleontology group.

During summer 2023, Littleton was supported by Faculty Research Assistants Funding (FRAF) to conduct research in Department Head Alycia Stigall’s lab. His project focused on comparing the shallow marine community structure before and after the Richmondian Invasion, a dramatic species invasion event in the Late Ordovician that is preserved in the strata around Cincinnati, Ohio, and Nashville.

Though this event is well-studied around Cincinnati, Littleton’s work was the first quantitative comparison of community change across this event in Nashville and represents a critical early step in a larger project in the Stigall Lab. He conducted field, lab, and quantitative analyses for this project, which he presented as a poster at the Annual Geological Society of America Meeting in Pittsburgh this past October. 

Littleton is presently working with Associate Professor Colin Sumrall’s group on fossil echinoderm evolution.

“The research which I am currently involved in with Sumrall deals with determining the faunal diversity of ophiuroids (brittle stars) and how their diversity changes across the Carboniferous Period, from the Colony Creek Shale in Texas,” said Littleton. “To do so, the lateral arm plates of brittle stars, which line the exterior of the animal’s limbs, are isolated from samples sourced from multiple stratigraphic layers representing different sections of time. These arm plates are identified to which taxon they belong and counted for abundance. However, quite a few taxa in our dataset are new to science and have yet to be named! For these, we use placeholder names. One such unnamed specimen from Colony Creek shows persistent dominance and has been classified as the ‘smooth modern’ type, while other less common taxa such as Furcaster and Suchaster occur in lower abundances.”