Hannah is interested in the functional morphology and evolution of the hominin shoulder girdle. Her dissertation work aims to explore locomotor adaptation in the australopithecines via an integrative form-function study of hominoid clavicle morphology.
Sam takes an integrative approach to studying fish skull movement in 3-dimensions, using wrasses (family Labridae) as her model system, and exploring how ligaments function in fish skulls, to add to our understanding of the biomechanics of fish feeding.
I am interested in how complex neurobiological structures develop and function. I believe cephalopods may be conducive models for such research due to their evolutionary divergence and the distributed nature of their nervous systems.
I research the evolution of animal development, with a focus on gene regulatory network (GRN) evolution, early animal evolution, and functional 3D genome architecture.
I investigate how skeletal morphologies change in evolution. I incorporate data from the fossil record to determine what anatomical adaptations have occurred, and developmental data to probe how these changes might have happened.
constructing a valid model of the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, by incorporating comparative functional morphology across extinct and extant hominoids
I am interested in studying the functional morphology and feeding behavior of dinosaurs, particularly the meat-eating theropod dinosaurs such as T. rex, Spinosaurus, and Allosaurus.
Understanding spatial variability and temporal shifts in early hominin paleoecology by integrating diverse data such as stable isotopes and faunal ecomorphology to describe past environmental conditions.
I am broadly interested in the origin and evolution of the mammalian feeding system. I am currently investigating the evolutionary transformation of the hyoid bones, and the impact of different hyoid morphotypes on swallowing biomechanics.
