Sam Giles


Sam Giles is a palaeobiologist at the University of Birmingham. Her research combines modern imaging with fossils to understand the evolution of life and in 2015 "rewrote" the vertebrate family tree. She was a 2017 L'Oréal-UNESCO Rising Star and won the 2019 Geological Society of London Lyell Fund.

Early life and education

Giles studied geology at the University of Bristol, graduating in 2011. Giles completed her doctor of philosophy at the University of Oxford in 2015, where she was a member of St Hugh's College. She worked with on early ray-finned fishes.

Career and research

In 2015, Giles was appointed a junior research fellow at Christ Church, Oxford. Giles was awarded a L'Oréal-UNESCO fellowship in 2016, which would allow her to study the anatomy of vertebrate's brains. In 2017, Giles was awarded a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship to study the evolution of the actinopterygii. In 2018, she joined the School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham as a member of academic staff.
Giles uses x-ray tomography to study the bone structure of Actinopterygii. Whilst the long-held assumption was that sharks were primitive forms of fish, Giles found that our latest common ancestors are not like sharks, but common bony and cartilaginous. Giles identified a new genus of Actinopterygii, which provided a new model of cranial anatomy. She used synchrotron-CT scans to examine the endoskeletal anatomy of Cheirolepis.
The ray-finned fishes comprise half of extinct vertebrate species. She compares the brains of ancient and modern fish, which helps to understand the evolution of the brain. Giles identified that ray-finned fish originated during the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary. By comparing scanilepiform fossils and Bichir, Giles found that ray-finned fishes were 40 million years younger than previously expected, "shaking up" and "rewriting" the evolutionary tree. She also studied Meemannia, finding lateral carnial and spiracular canals. She also works on Placodermi and Gnathostomata.
She has written for the HuffPost and given several popular science lectures. In 2019 Giles was awarded the Geological Society of London Lyell Fund, which is awarded to researchers on the basis of outstanding published research.