# Rodrigo T. Figueroa Biodiversity Postdoctoral Fellow, September 2024 - 2026 Stephanie Pierce Lab ![a person standing outside, with a rock wall and vegetation background](/sites/g/files/omnuum6431/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/mcz/files/rodrigo_tinoco_figueroa.png?itok=Vcwinjb4) location\_on Museum of Comparative Zoology email Rodrigo has a passion for fossil collection and taxonomy since childhood when he found his first fossils. Years of fossil hunting and reading about extinct faunas forged his interest in understanding how life on Earth has evolved and changed over geologic time scale. Rodrigo’s research focuses on the neglected Paleozoic fish record of South America where he has already described several new fossil occurrences and new fossil taxa, studying a wide range of fishes from placoderms to ray-finned fishes. His current research focuses on shaping patterns of morphological evolution along the earliest branches of the ray-finned fish tree, relying on a combination of field and museum collection work as well as CT-scanning. In recent years Rodrigo has developed several lines of work ranging from description of new Paleozoic ray-finned fishes to working on soft-tissue preservation in the fossil record of fishes.