Dr Marissa Betts

Biography

Marissa is a Senior Lecturer in Earth Science and a geologist and invertebrate palaeontologist studying some of the earliest complex skeletons in the fossil record. Her research focuses mostly on the early Cambrian (about 538–509 million years ago) of South Australia, Antarctica, China, Mongolia and Canada, but has also recently included the middle Cambrian of QLD and the Cretaceous of northwest NSW and western QLD. Marissa works both in the ‘nuts and bolts’ of palaeontology—the description, identification and interpretation of fossils—and also in the application of fossils to broad, usually geological questions. Her research contributes to dating and correlating packages of rocks around the world, palaeoenvironmental interpretation, global continental plate reconstructions and building and refining the geological timescale. She is delighted by how studying rocks at a very fine scale can reveal big-picture stories about what the Earth was like in the deep past.

Marissa is a Superstar of STEM (2021 – 2022), NSW Young Tall Poppy (2021), A.H. Voisey Medalist (2021) and ARC-funded researcher (DECRA22). She is committed to improving diversity in STEM– particularly in the Earth Sciences. She volunteers as a STEM Coach for Curious Minds Australia, a program that supports high school girls interested in STEM subjects. Her public outreach leverages film; she hosts the Sci-Flicks science film events at the Belgrave Cinema in Armidale (with the associated Sci-Flicks podcast, on Spotify) and has also directed and produced a short film, ROLA[STONE], about the connection between geology, landscape and culture.

With geologist colleagues Dr Tim Chapman and Dr Luke Milan, Marissa has recently co-founded the multidisciplinary geoscientific research and teaching group LithoLabUNE (LLUNE). LLUNE continues a strong tradition of world-class Earth science research at UNE and provides a hub to connect with UNE’s sizeable community of online and on campus Geoscience students.

Marissa co-ordinates GEOL120 Dynamic Earth, GEOL202 Introductory Palaeontology and teaches into into GEOL110 Blue Planet and GEOL311 Palaeontology and Stratigraphy. She especially loves teaching in the field where she can show students fossils in their broader geological context. She also supervises a team of dedicated Honours and HDR students tackling palaeontological and geological projects up and down the timescale.