Dr. Javier Ortega Hernández

Biography

Javier Ortega-Hernández is an Associate Professor in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, with an affiliation in Earth and Planetary Sciences. His primary research goal is to understand the substantial extinct biodiversity of invertebrate metazoans that appeared and rapidly diversified during the Paleozoic Era, a period spanning from 541 to 251 million years ago. Currently, he focuses on the study of exceptional Lower Paleozoic sites around the world known for their remarkable preservation. These fossiliferous deposits provide critical information regarding the morphology and organization of soft-bodied organisms and detail their internal anatomy, which is otherwise dramatically underrepresented in the rock record. His research includes a strong interest in the origin and subsequent radiation of Ecdysozoa, particularly during the Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, with an emphasis on the morphology, phylogeny, and development of extinct panarthropods, which have extant representatives including euarthropods, tardigrades, and onychophorans. Ultimately, he combines traditional paleontological approaches with cutting-edge techniques to obtain new morphological information from fossils, testing macroevolutionary hypotheses across deep time to clarify the origins of major animal groups that have shaped the biosphere for over 500 million years.

Research Interests

Experience