Research & Projects
Research & Projects
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As mentioned on the home page, I work on a variety of topics ranging from taphonomy (everything that happens from death to discovery), dinosaur vertebral anatomy, histology (microscopic anatomy), pachycephalosaurs (the "dome-headed" dinos), dinosaur vision, fossil laws and regulations, dinosaur biomechanics (how they moved), stegosaurs (the triangular plated, spiky-tailed dinos), ontogeny (growth and development), soft-tissue preservation, dinosaur behavior, and human-fossil cultural interactions (such as describing a fossil manatee relative in an ancient Egyptian catacomb).
(check out my Google Scholar and ResearchGate pages)
But my main area of specialization and interest is dedicated to sauropod (the "long-necked") dinosaurs. Sauropods are some of our most iconic dinosaurs; their body plan visually symbolizes "dinosaur" for many, and sauropods grace everything from the logo of Sinclair Oil, "Gertie" (WAY before "Mickey Mouse"), "Littlefoot" from The Land Before Time, to the Brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park (the first dinosaur fully shown in the film).
Below you can find brief synopses from some of my research projects:
In 2022, I led a research team that identified the very first avian-style respiratory infection in a dinosaur.
Sticking out of the pleurocoels in three cervical vertebrae were abnormal bony masses that clearly indicated some kind of disease/malady. Working with a team of paleontologists, anatomists, and veterinarians, we identified these abnormalities as signs of an incredibly bad respiratory infection. Essentially, the animal had a respiratory infection that was so bad that it caused secondary infections in the bones.
In 2018, I led a research team that described the smallest diplodocid (sauropods like Diplodocus and Apatosaurus) skull known thus far.
We nicknamed the fossil "Andrew", and it's not just its diminutive size that's important. The various proportions of the skull help to further identify how the regions of the skull not only grew larger, but also changed shape as these animals grew up. And varied tooth forms in "Andrew's" mouth suggest that these young sauropods were feeding on a wide variety of plant types - unlike their adult forms.
Having different tooth forms in order to eat a wider variety of plants likely helped these young sauropods eat all their veggies so they could grow up fast and strong!
This paper was more of a "what if?" exercise. In other dinosaur formations, such as the Hell Creek Formation (which was only ~1 million years in duration), there were distinct species of dinosaurs - like Triceratops - but features, such as individual variation, had led paleontologists to previously believe there were in fact far more species than there really were. And that many of these seemingly diagnostic features - such as horns and frills - radically changed shape through ontogeny (growth). AND many of these species did not co-occur, but instead occurred during distinct intervals in the rock record (stratigraphy).
So, looking at the Morrison Formation - which was ~7 million years in duration, and had a astonishingly high number of sauropod species (> 2 dozen!) - could some of these factors that do indeed impact our notions about diversity (such as variation, ontogeny, and stratigraphy) have any influence on our reconstructions of Morrison sauropod diversity?
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