[Aqualist] 79th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Brisbane October 9-12, 2019

[Tim Barrows]

From: Gilbert Price <g.price1 at uq.edu.au>

G'day!

The Host Committee of the 79th Annual Meeting is delighted to welcome all participants to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's 2019 meeting in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 9-12 October. The meeting will take place at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, ideally located in the unique riverside cultural and lifestyle precinct of South Brisbane. Details: http://vertpaleo.org/Annual-Meeting/Annual-Meeting-Home.aspx 

The 79th meeting will be only the third SVP to be hosted outside of North America, and the first one in the Southern Hemisphere. The meeting is co-hosted by The University of Queensland and the Queensland Museum. Although vertebrate fossils were first recognised in Australia by Europeans in the 1830s, global interest in the continent's vertebrate fossil record was invigorated in the 1950s and 1960s following the fieldwork and research of American paleo-mammalogist, Dr Ruben Stirton, and his team of students including Richard Tedford and Michael Woodburne. Interest in Australian vertebrate paleontology grew considerably after that time, culminating in the inaugural Conference on Australasian Vertebrate Evolution, Palaeontology, and Systematics, an informal, voluntarily organised biennial meeting first held in Brisbane in 1987. The 79th SVP meeting represents a coming-of-age for Australian vertebrate paleontology.

Brisbane's location at the capital of Queensland's premier tourist region presents the ideal opportunity for delegates to enjoy a microcosm of Australia's iconic experiences. World Heritage-listed rainforests, amazing beaches, islands, wineries, and the internationally famous Australia Zoo - home of the 'Crocodile Hunter' - are all easily accessible within an hour of the city. It is even possible to do day trips to the Great Barrier Reef from Brisbane. The Queensland Museum's geoscience collection, based in the Brisbane suburb of Hendra, is the largest palaeontological collection in Australia and one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.

2019 represents the first SVP Annual Meeting held on a Gondwanan continent and provides a gateway to the major regions of global paleontological significance including other cities and regional locations around Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and Southeast Asia. Queensland in particular is home to:
*	The Riversleigh World Heritage Area considered by Sir David Attenborough as one of the four most important fossil sites on Earth;
*	A new and diverse suite of Cretaceous-aged dinosaur sites critical in the understanding of Gondwanan biogeography;
*	The earliest known Carboniferous tetrapods in Gondwana;
*	The youngest uncontested Australian Pleistocene megafauna site, Neds Gully, just a stone's throw from Brisbane;
*	The earliest known crown-group marsupials along with some of the oldest evidence for echo-locating bats, song birds, and extant genera of frogs; and
*	The Chinchilla Fauna, Australia's most extensive Pliocene vertebrate fossil locality and one that contains the forbearers to most modern Australian marsupials.
We invite everyone to attend the Welcome Reception at the Queensland Museum where we will highlight Queensland's rich heritage in vertebrate paleontology. We hope that you will enjoy all that Brisbane, Queensland, and Australia more broadly has to offer during the 79th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology!
Gilbert Price, and on behalf of the 2019 Host Committee.