WitmerLab

21st-century approaches to fleshing out the past! Mission: to use the structure of past & present animals to interpret evolutionary history...and to share it!

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Finished skeletonizing this hyacinth macaw today & made this cranial kinesis vid. Full vid on the WitmerLab FB.

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

After a stimulating 1st day of our meeting of our Deep Time Cognition grant team, bringing together scholars from Lund Univ (Sweden), Charles Univ (Czech Republic), Univ. of Edinburgh (Scotland) & Ohio Univ (USA). Thanks to @SteveBrusatte & his team for hosting us in Edinburgh!

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Rising @OhioU senior Casey Funk places a Laysan albatross skull on the #OUµCT scanner. 2/2

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Casey Funk is a rising @OhioU senior joining our lab this summer. She's in the @OHIOartsandsci pre-health track studying bio & psych. Casey is interested in brain & cognitive evolution which we kinda do—starting with #OUµCT of an albatross to generate a brain endocast! 1/2

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Finally got my copy of @SteveBrusatte’s The Story of Birds, the latest in his “New History” series. I read an early draft, so I know I’ll enjoy it as much as his dinosaur & mammal books. Reading material for my trip to Edinburgh next week to work with Steve & our grant team!

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Had a wonderful & productive visit w/ Justyna Słowiak—so many tyrannosaurs! She's building an exciting career at @IPaleoPAN by leading modern studies of the dinosaurs of the classic Polish-Mongolian Expeditions with a network of collaborators. I'm lucky to be among the latter!

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Surprised this week to find that a new dinosaur species bears my name—sorta. Paul Penkalski named a species of Pinacosaurus after a 2003 paper. P. hilwitnorum combines the authors Rob Hill, me & Mark Norell. Cool to see that our article—https://t.co/CiZqPJdo3a—is still relevant!

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

@IPaleoPAN @Czetna Correction: This photo of Tarbosaurus & Justyna Słowiak (@Czetna) was shot in the Museum of Evolution (Muzeum Ewolucji) in Warsaw, not the Institute of Paleobiology. Looks like a wonderful museum that I need to visit!
https://t.co/Ah90NBFb37

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Tarbosaurus! 🦖 Having a great visit with Justyna Słowiak of @IPaleoPAN. She's been honing her segmentation skills on a Tarbo braincase, with some guidance from our CT guru Ryan Ridgely. We're already collaborating on brain endocast ontogeny but lots of new projects are brewing!

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Here's Justyna Słowiak with the full skeleton of the same adult Tarbosaurus specimen (ZPAL MgD-I/4) in the museum space at @IPaleoPAN. It's exciting how Justyna and her colleagues in Warsaw are using new techniques like CT to restudy these Gobi specimens discovered in the 1960s.

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Excited to welcome Justyna Słowiak of the Institute of Paleobiology at the Polish Academy of Sciences for a couple weeks. We're collaborating on aspects of skull evolution of the Mongolian tyrannosaurid Tarbosaurus. Stay tuned for more from Dr. Słowiak—& from our collaboration!🦖

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Had a great time this week at the @RoyalTyrrell Museum, culminating in the CurrieFest symposium yesterday, honoring Phil Currie's 50 years in Alberta! It was a special day—& a total surprise for Phil! Otherwise, I was in the collections & had a full day on my own in the exhibits!

[David Evans @DavidEvans_ROM]

Yesterday we held Currie Fest-a special symposium to honour Phil’s 50 years of conducting dinosaur research in Alberta. What an amazing career— thanks Phil for everything you have done for palaeontology, and inspiring so many!

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

@DoubleBeam @RoyalTyrrell @Carni_Voris @ohiou @OUHCOM @OhioBioSciences @OhioEcoEvo Well y’know, we talked about that today. 🤔 Looks like there’s a right ceratobranchial tucked under the right mandible where it belongs. The bone in question could be a rib or gastralium…or the other cerato. Potential hyoids merit renewed interest, huh? 😉

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Great to meet up with Jared Voris today at the @RoyalTyrrell & study some beautiful juvenile specimens of the tyrannosaurid Gorgosaurus (this one is TMP 2016.014.0001). Happy to play a role in two awesome articles led by Jared: https://t.co/QBP2MKSlg0 & https://t.co/PSwjDjaIPn

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Congrats to graduating senior Grace Vance who defended her honors thesis on cranial vascular adaptations for diving in seals this week & submitted it today! We'll send it off for publication soon. Grace is a truly impressive person with a bright future! Off to Purdue for her PhD!

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

#FossilFriday From the depths of the pandemic to a wonderful #OA article out this week in @SVP_vertpaleo—https://t.co/cTbTkk3j0B—congratulations to Marissa Livius, @Jordan_Mallon & the whole team! A blast to dig back into ankylosaurs to sort out the Panoplosaurus-Edmontonia mess.

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Excited to report that @ScrippsJSchool journalism student Eric Boles published his master's thesis research (which I helped supervise) on aspects of news coverage of paleo in the 1990s in @HistBiol: https://t.co/28wfe0dibH. Also elicited an editorial: https://t.co/6fb5vL2vYa! 🦖

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

Today is the @OHIOstudentexpo! For the third year in a row @OHIOHonors student Grace Vance took first place for her senior thesis research on vascular adaptations for deep diving in seals! Well done, Grace! 🦭🏆

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

#HappyEaster🐰 from your friends at WitmerLab!
A crunchy take on that traditional favorite this #Easter — now with added calcium!

@ohiou @OUHCOM @OhioBioSciences #rabbit #easterbunny #oryctolaguscuniculus #OUµCT #microCT #chocolatebunny

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

We love Baby Cam, too, @TM9380!

[WitmerLab @WitmerLab]

A quiet #FossilFriday in the lab, just me & the gang. Here's the Camarasaurus "station" that @OhioU freshman Klazina McKeigan set up to learn dinosaur skulls: huge skull of the Gunma Camarasaurus (GMNH-PV 101)—both articulated & disarticulated—along with "baby Cam" (CM 11338). 🦕