Teresa Manera

Teresa Manera de Bianco is an Argentine paleontologist and geologist. She was a professor in the geology department of the Universidad Nacional del Sur. She conducts research on vertebrate paleontology and topics related to vertebrate footprints and remains from the Quaternary period. In 1986, she discovered a stretch of land near Pehuen Co containing 12,000-year-old fossilized footprints of at least 22 distinct species, including those of the extinct sloth Megatherium and Glyptodonts.

Teresa Manera
Alma materUniversidad Nacional del Sur
Scientific career
FieldsPaleontology, geology
InstitutionsUniversidad Nacional del Sur
ThesisEstudio tafonómico y bioestratigráfico de los vertebrados de la Formación Monte Hermoso (Plioceno) en su localidad tipo, provincia de Buenos Aires.
Doctoral advisorEster Farinati
Author abbrev. (zoology)Bianco

Early life and education

Teresa Manera was born into a Bahian family of Italian immigrants.[1] She studied at the Universidad Nacional del Sur, earning a degree in geological sciences in 1968 and a PhD in geology in 1972.[2][3]

Career and research

Manera spent much of her career as a professor of paleontology in the Department of Geology of the Universidad Nacional del Sur in Bahía Blanca. She worked at the university from 1968 to 2015, starting out as a teaching assistant.[3] Manera conducts research on vertebrate paleontology and topics related to vertebrate footprints and remains from the Quaternary period.[3]

Manera settled in Punta Alta, where she began collecting fossils for a museum. Following a storm in October 1986, she and her family discovered a three-kilometre stretch of land east of Pehuen Co with a sedimentary rock platform near the beach containing 12,000-year-old fossilized footprints of at least 22 distinct species, including large mammals such as the extinct sloth Megatherium[1][4] as well as Macrauchenia, mastodons, and bears.[5] Footprints of Glyptodonts were discovered at the site in 2016.[6][7]

Following the discovery, Manera published a paper with fellow UNS academic Silvia Ramallo.[5] She led a project with students from the Universidad Nacional del Sur to create molds and replicas of the fossilized footprints.[8]

A 2005 bill to make the archeological site a natural reserve was approved by the Government of Buenos Aires.[9] Through Law Nº 13.394, the site was declared the Pehuen Co-Monte Hermoso Provincial Geological, Paleontological and Archaeological Reserve. The site was added to a tentative UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 2012.[4]

Manera discovered the holotype of the extinct turtle species Yaminuechelys gasparinii in the La Colonia Formation in 2001.[10][11] In 2014, Manera was part of a team that described the Early Pliocene fossil fish genus Plesiopercichthys after discovering its type species, Plesiopercichthys dimartinoi, in the Monte Hermoso Formation.[12]

Manera is the author of numerous research papers, book chapters and books. She authored the 2008 book Yacimiento Paleoicnológico de Pehuen-Có. Un patrimonio natural en peligro. Her books Las huellas de los gigantes and La herencia de Darwin a la paleantología regional were published by EdiUNS.[13]

Awards and honors

Manera has been the honorary scientific director of the Carlos Darwin Museum of Natural Sciences in Punta Alta since 1990.[3] She won a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2004[14][15] and was declared an illustrious citizen of Rosaleña in 2014.[16]

Selected publications
  • Manera de Bianco, Teresa; Aramayo, Silvia A.; Zavala, Carlos; Caputo, Ricardo O. (2008). "Yacimiento Paleoicnológico de Pehuen-Có. Un patrimonio natural en peligro". Sitios de Interés Geológico de la República Argentin (in Spanish): 509–520.
  • Manera de Bianco, T., Aramayo, S. A. y Ortiz, H. O. (2005). "Trazas de pelaje en icnitas de megaterios en el Yacimiento Paleoicnológico de Pehuen Có (Pleistoceno Tardío), provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina". 21º Jornadas Argentinas de Paleontología de Vertebrados.
  • Agnolin, Federico L.; Bogan, Sergio; Tomassini, Rodrigo L.; Manera, Teresa (2014). "Nuevo Percichthyidae (Teleostei, Percoidei) del Plioceno temprano de la provincia de Buenos Aires (Argentina) y sus implicancias biogeográficas". Revista del Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. 16 (1): 19–31. ISSN 1853-0400.
  • Aramayo, Silvia A.; Manera de Bianco, Teresa; Bastianelli, Nerea V.; Melchor, Ricardo N. (December 2015). "Pehuen Co: Updated taxonomic review of a late Pleistocene ichnological site in Argentina". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 439: 144–165. Bibcode:2015PPP...439..144A. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2015.07.006.

References
  1. "Museo Darwin, un tesoro paleontológico". Revista Familia Cooperativa. September 2005. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  2. "Nueva publicación internacional sobre Darwin, destaca a Teresa Manera". Punta Noticias (in Spanish). 22 September 2017. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  3. "Teresa Manera: "Tesoros bajo la arena"". Punta Noticias (in Spanish). 21 February 2018. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  4. Gambarota, Daniela; Leonardi, Viviana (2021). "Incidencia de la acción comunitaria en la valoración turística de los recursos paleontológicos de la localidad de Pehuen Có, Buenos Aires (Argentina)" (PDF). Revista Internacional de Turismo, Empresa y Territorio. 5 (2): 12–21. doi:10.21071/riturem.v5i2.13496. S2CID 256169689. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  5. "Pehuen Co: aventura, naturaleza y ciencia en un mismo lugar". La Voz del Pueblo. 28 December 2020. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  6. "Pehuen Co: hallaron 11 huellas de gliptodonte en la reserva natural". La Nueva (in Spanish). 23 December 2016. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  7. Hiss, Tony (2017). In Motion: The Experience of Travel. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-17744-3.
  8. "Teresa Manera deja su huella para preservar el yacimiento de Pehuen Co". La Nueva (in Spanish). 18 September 2005. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  9. "Dr. Teresa Manera de Bianco". European Environment Foundation. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  10. Fuente, Marcelo S. de la; Sterli, Juliana; Maniel, Ignacio (2013). Origin, Evolution and Biogeographic History of South American Turtles. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 84. ISBN 978-3-319-00518-8.
  11. De la Fuente, M., F. Lapparent de Broin, and T. Manera de Bianco. 2001, The oldest and first nearly complete skeleton of a chelid, of the Hydromedusa sub-group (Chelidae, Pleurodira), from the Upper Cretaceous of Patagonia. Bullettin de la Société Géologique de France. 172:237–244.
  12. Federico L. Agnolin; Sergio Bogan; Rodrigo L. Tomassini; Teresa Manera (2014). "Nuevo Percichthyidae (Teleostei, Percoidei) del Plioceno temprano de la provincia de Buenos Aires (Argentina) y sus implicancias biogeográficas" (PDF). Revista del Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. Nueva Series. 16 (1): 19–31. doi:10.22179/revmacn.16.159. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 August 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  13. "EdiUNS presentó dos libros de la doctora Teresa Manera". La Nueva (in Spanish). 13 August 2014. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  14. "Premian a una paleontóloga argentina en Francia". La Nacion (in Spanish). 28 September 2004. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  15. "Huellas al pasado". Premios Rolex a la Iniciativa (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  16. "Teresa Manera de Bianco, ciudadana ilustre rosaleña". La Nueva (in Spanish). 3 December 2014. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
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