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The Beginning of the Age of Mammals
After 10 years in preparation, Dr. Ken Rose's
book, The Beginning of the Age of Mammals, has been published
this fall by Johns
Hopkins University Press. The book is a graduate/upper level undergraduate
text focusing on the Paleocene-Eocene radiations of mammals that followed
the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. See this
link to the publisher's page for the volume. Readers of this book
may also be interested in Dr. Rose's The Rise of Placental Mammals,
co-edited with Dr. David Archibald and also published by Johns Hopkins
University Press in 2005.
UPDATE: Johns Hopkins University Press has provided a 20%
discount for the book. Click on the link to download the coupon.
Posted: 15 October 2006
Dr. Rose to Continue Indian Research
Congratulations to Dr. Kenneth Rose, who has received funding
from the National Geographic Society to continue fieldwork in India.
This research grant will support further work to locate and describe
early Eocene mammals from western India.
Dr. Rose also recently participated
as a speaker at a conference held in honor of the 75th birthday of Elwyn
Simons (Duke University). FAE's Dr. Mark Teaford was also in attendance.
Posted: 12 December 2005
The Rise of Placental Mammals released
The volume The Rise of Placental Mammals: Origins And Relationships of the Major Extant Clades, edited by
our Dr. Ken Rose and by Dr. J. David Archibald of San Diego State University,
is now available from Johns Hopkins University Press. Go to the JHU Press page
for more information about this comprehensive book, ordering details, and a list of its dozens of contributors.
Posted: 7 March 2005
A belated congratulations to Dr. Rose on his Humboldt Award!
Dr. Kenneth Rose is currently completing
his tenure as an Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation Award winner, awarded to him in 2003. His
research at the Institut
für Paläontologie in Bonn, Germany, is supported by the foundation,
which awards grants to scientists each year for internationally-recognized
contributions to their fields. Many are invited to conduct research
at Germany's academic institutions. This is a great honor, and we at
the Center are proud to recognize Dr. Rose's achievement.
Posted: 6 September 2004
New version of Moment Macro available for ImageJ
A new version of the Moment Macro for calculating cross-sectional moments is now available. (Click here to visit macro page.)
This version is designed to operate with ImageJ on both PC and Macintosh platforms. Please note that we are still testing and resolving minor bugs in the macro.
The macro page will be updated accordingly as we solve these minor problems.
Posted: 16 March 2006
Events at FAE (February to July 2005)
19 February - Dr. Chris Ruff will co-chair a symposium
on "New Ideas about Old Bones: Bone Biomechanics and Human Evolution"
at the annual
AAAS meeting in Washington, D.C.
6-10 April - At the annual American
Association of Physical Anthropology meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
Drs. Ruff and Teaford, as
well as current students Jason Organ and
Benjamin Auerbach, will be presenting papers and posters. Dr. Teaford will also be co-chairing a
career development panel discussion on the 6th. Drs. Kristina
Aldridge, Valerie DeLeon, Gail Krovitz, and Carol Ward, alumni, will
also be presenting papers.
Updated: 15 June 2005
Mark Teaford awarded Professor's Teaching Award
Mark Teaford has received the Professor's Award for Excellence
in Teaching in the Preclinical Sciences for 2005-2006. This is the highest
accolade granted by the School of Medicine to basic science professors. Dr. Teaford
teaches human gross anatomy with the other members of FAE's faculty. Congratulations!
Posted: 28 March 2006
FAE faculty in the science press news
Using a confocal microscope and new computer software, a team
of scientists including Mark Teaford have developed
a faster and more objective way to examine the surfaces of fossilized
teeth, thus gaining new insights into the evolution of diet and tooth
use. In a study published
in Nature, early human ancestors were shown to have variable diets,
but with significant overlap between species. The main differences probably
related back to so-called fallback foods available during periods of
resource scarcity.
Posted: 5 September 2005
Upcoming events at FAE (February to July 2005)
19 February - Dr. Mark Teaford will
be co-chairing another symposium at the AAAS meeting on the "Origin
and Evolution of Modern Human Diet."
2-6 April - Dr. Teaford will be giving an invited talk on job prospects
for anatomists in physical anthropology and forensics on the 3rd at the annual
American Association of Anatomists meeting in San Diego.
6-10 April - At the annual American
Association of Physical Anthropology meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
Drs. Ruff and Teaford, as
well as current students Jason Organ and
Benjamin Auerbach, will be presenting papers and posters. Dr. Teaford will also be co-chairing a
career development panel discussion on the 6th. Drs. Kristina
Aldridge, Valerie DeLeon, Gail Krovitz, and Carol Ward, alumni, will
also be presenting papers.
Posted: 11 February 2005
Belated congratulations to Dr. Teaford
We give a belated congratulations to Dr. Mark Teaford, who
has been selected by the first year students (class of 2007) of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
for his contribution as an outstanding pre-clinical teacher in human gross anatomy. As part of this honor,
the students bestowed a Ravens helmet to our resident Baltimore football fan.
Posted: 26 December 2004
FAE faculty in the science press news
In September, 2005, Dave Weishampel was honored to have a dinosaur named
after him. Penelopognathus weishampeli is a new hadrosauroid ornithopod
from the Bayan Gobi Formation (Lower Cretaceous) of Nei Mongol Zizhiqu,
People's Republic of China. Named by Pascal Godefroit, Hong Li, and
Chang-Yong Shang (see "Articles in Press"), this dinosaur provides important information on the
origin of hadrosaurids (duck-billed dinosaurs).
Posted: 5 September 2005
Dr. Weishampel in Spain...again.
Dr. David Weishampel returns to Spain
for an international meeting in Barcelona in conjunction with a new
Iguanodon exhibit at the new Museo
de la Ciencia de la Fundación "la Caixa." In September of 2004,
he attended another meeting in Salas
de los Infantes, Spain.
Dr. Weishampel would also like to announce the upcoming release of the
second edition of Drs. Fastovsky and Weishampel's Evolution and
Extinction of the Dinosaurs, published by Cambridge
University Press and due out in April.
Posted: 8 February 2005
The Dinosauria, 2nd Edition, at last!
Dr. Weishampel is pleased to announce
the publication of the fully revised second edition of The Dinosauria.
Published by the University
of California Press, it includes original phylogenetic analyses
of all dinosaurian clades (including birds), new chapters on paleoecology,
taphonomy, biogeography, thermoregulation, and extinction, and features
cover art by Mark Hallett. This makes the second book he has published
over the past two years (the other is Dinosaur Papers 1676-1906,
a presentation of the early dinosaur literature with historical commentary,
published by the Smithsonian
Institution Press.
Posted: 10 October 2004
Dr. Weishampel in Spain
Dave Weishampel had the pleasure of
attending the III Jornadas Internacionales sobre Paleontologia de Dinosaurios
y su Entorno in Salas de los Infantes, Spain, this past September. A
three-day meeting (including a field trip of the surrounding geology
and dinosaur footprint localities), this symposium was international
in terms of participants (Spain, England, and the United States) and
showcased the rich ichnofaunas found throughout Spain, systematics papers
on sauropods and ankylosaurs, the dinosaurs of the east coast of North
America, possible marine dinosaurs, and dinosaurian origins, as well
as the Museo
de Dinosaurios in Salas, with an extensive collection of Early Cretaceous
dinosaurs, crocodilians, turtles, and fishes.
Posted: 6 October 2004
New version of Moment Macro available for ImageJ
A new version of the Moment Macro for calculating cross-sectional moments is now available. (Click here to visit macro page.)
This version is designed to operate with ImageJ on both PC and Macintosh platforms. Please note that we are still testing and resolving minor bugs in the macro.
The macro page will be updated accordingly as we solve these minor problems.
Posted: 16 March 2006
Alessandra DeLeon
FAE sends a very belated congratulations to Valerie
and Iser
DeLeon on the birth of their second daughter, Alessandra, in November.
Send congratulatory messages either to Valerie via our deprtmental
address or directly via e-mail.
Posted: 2 January 2006
Valerie DeLeon joins faculty at FAE
The Center has added a fifth full-time faculty position and
hired Hopkins alumna Dr. Valerie DeLeon. Dr. DeLeon
has just completed a post-doctoral fellowship under Dr.
Roger Reeves, where she researched the genetics of heart septal
defects involved with Down Syndrome, among other topics. She previously
studied fluctuating asymmetry in crania for her dissertation research
under Dr. Joan Richtsmeier.
At FAE, Dr. DeLeon will join the four senior faculty members in instructing the medical
human gross anatomy course. She also intends to pursue research into
craniofacial development, morphological integration, and methods for
obtaining geometric morphometrics. Additionally, as a joint-appointment
as affiliated faculty with the Center
for Craniofacial Development and Disorders at Johns Hopkins, she
will investigate brain dysmorphology in individuals with autism. We
welcome Dr. DeLeon to her new position in FAE.
Posted: 1 August 2005
Congratulations to Mike
Mike Habib has been awarded money from
the Jurassic
Foundation for travel and data collection. This will help fund his
dissertation research on the structural mechanics and evolution of vertebrate
flight.
Posted: 15 June 2007
Congratulations to Kirsten and Michael!
This May, Kirsten Brown and Michael
Yashinski successfully passed their qualifying oral examinations.
We look forward to seeing their future work as we are sure their advisors
will as well.
Posted: 1 June 2007
Awards continue for FAE students
Madeleine recently received the William
and Mary Drescher Award for Graduate Medical Research. This prize is
given to promising incoming graduate students with an outstanding academic
record and achievements in biomedical research.
Frank has been awarded a Stephen
J. Gould Grant from the Paleontological
Society. This will fund his continuing dissertation research on
the dental microwear and jaw mechanics of ceratopsians and pachycephalosaurs. Congratulations to both of you!
Posted: 18 October 2006
Frank goes to China
Good luck to Frank Varriale as he departs
this August for the Wucaiwan area of the Junggar Basin in Xinjiang
Province, China. There he will spend a month in the field with Dr.
Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology,
and Dr.
James Clark of George Washington University. They will be digging
in the Late Jurassic, Shishugou Formation which has recently produced
the most basal ceratopsian, Yinlong downsi, and an
early tyrannosauroid, Guanlong wucaii. Frank will
proceed to research in museums in China, Mongolia and Poland after completing field
work in China.
Update: Frank has sent us a photo from the field, showing Frank and the femur of a new stegosaurus in the Shishugou Formation.
Posted: 31 July 2006
Updated: 10 September 2006
New people join FAE
We welcome our two new graduate students, Madeleine Chollet
and Evan Garofalo. Madeleine recently completed her studies at Rice
University, where she obtained a B.A. in Anthropology. Evan joins us
from the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History
(Smithsonian) in Washington, D.C., after completing a B.A. in Anthropology
at Tulane and a M.S. in Human Osteology and Palaeopathology at the University
of Bradford.
We also extend a welcome to Donna Jones, a researcher working with Dr.
Rebecca German. She will be joining FAE faculty and graduate students
in the anatomy lab this fall as an instructor.
Posted: 10 September 2006
Congratulations to Frank
Congratulations to Frank Varriale who
has received a Grant-in-Aid of Research from Sigma
Xi, as well as a graduate student research grant from the Geological
Society of America. Both grants will support his work on the dental
microwear and jaw mechanics of ceratopsians and pachycephalosaurs.
Frank was recently an invited speaker at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of
Paleontology. His talk, entitled "Testing for Dinosaur-Angiosperm Coevolutionary
Relationships with an Analysis of Marginocephalian Dental Microwear
and Jaw Morphology," was an evaluation of the current literature and a
description of his ongoing work.
Posted: 5 May 2006
Jason Organ wins the AAPA Mildred Trotter Award
Congratulations to Jason Organ (pictured at right with advisor Mark Teaford), who was awarded the
Mildred Trotter Student Prize
at this month's American Association of Physical Anthropologists Annual
Meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. His paper was entitled "To grasp or not to grasp? Structure and function of platyrrhine caudal vertebrae,"
in which Jason examined differences in biomechanical properties of prehensile, semiprehensile and non-prehensile New World monkey tails. He will continue the study of tail mechanics in his dissertation research.
Posted: 16 March 2006
Congratulations to Frank Varialle
Congratulations to Frank Varriale, who has received funding
from the Jurassic Foundation to support his dissertation research, entitled
"Testing for Dinosaur-Angiosperm Coevolutionary Relationships with an
Analysis of Marginocephalian Dental Microwear and Jaw Morphology." Frank's
funding will support travel to museums in China and Poland where he
will be conducting data collection.
Posted: 2 February 2006
Congratulations to Jason and Benjamin
Hats off to FAE's Jason Organ and Benjamin Auerbach, who both
have received doctoral dissertation improvement grants from the National
Science Foundation to support their dissertation research. Jason will
be employing his grant in research to examine the functional anatomy
and biomechanics of prehensile tails in comparison with non-prehensile
tails. Benjamin's funding will support research into the morphological
variation of prehistoric New World humans in relation to environmental
factors.
Posted: 19 December 2005
Compliments to Matthew O'Neill
A belated congratulations is given to Matthew O'Neill, who
has received a doctoral dissertation improvement grant from the National
Science Foundation and a dissertation fieldwork grant from the Wenner-
Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. These are currently funding
his dissertation research, entitled "Energetics of primate quadrupedalism:
Limb design, mechanics and the metabolic cost of force production."
Matthew will be conducting his data collection at Duke University and
their Primate Center.
Posted: 6 December 2005
New faces at FAE
We at the Center welcome our two new first year Ph.D. graduate students, Michael Yashinski
and Kirsten Brown. Michael recently completed his studies at Franklin and Marshall College, where
he completed a B.A. in Geosciences and a B.A. in Biology. Kirsten joins the department from Louisiana
State University, where she finished a B.A. in Anthropology. Welcome to Anatomy at Hopkins!
Posted: 25 August 2005
Congratulations to Amy Chew for her doctorate!
Congratulations to Amy Chew, who successfully defended her dissertation entitled "Biostratigraphy, Paleoecology and Synchronized Evolution in the Early Eocene Mammalian Fauna of the Central Bighorn Basin, Wyoming"
on May 20. We are grateful to Drs. Gregg Gunnell
(University of Michigan), Steven Stanley (Johns Hopkins),
and Scott Wing (Smithsonian), who served as external readers.
Amy has accepted a position as postdoctoral fellow in anatomical sciences at
Stony Brook University, beginning in August, where she will work with Prof. Dave Krause.
Posted: 15 June 2005
FAE publication in Nature
In the March 24 issue of Nature, FAE
doctoral candidates Shawn Zack and Tonya Penkrot (together
with University of Florida Assistant Professor Jon Bloch
and FAE Professor Ken Rose) describe skeletal remains of
early Eocene 'hyopsodontid' condylarths from Wyoming which suggest relationship to African elephant shrews
(Macroscelidea). The limb bones of Haplomylus and Apheliscus show specializations for running and jumping
that are specifically shared with elephant shrews, one of the most primitive groups assigned to the African
clade Afrotheria by molecular systematists. The new fossils suggest a Holarctic (perhaps even North American)
origin of Afrotheria.
Posted: 28 March 2005
Congratulations to Ann Zumwalt for Ph.D. defense!
Congratulations to Ann Zumwalt for the successful defense of her dissertation:
"The effect of endurance exercise on the morphology of muscle attachment sites: An experimental
study in sheep (Ovis aries)" on November 22. We thank the Harvard Field Station and
Dr. Dan Lieberman for making available the facilities for carrying out the experimental
part of the study, and Drs. John Matyas and
Cindy Wilczak for also serving on her external
advisory committee. Ann is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the
Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy at Duke University,
where she is continuing her work on exercise and functional adaptation of the skeleton.
Posted: 28 November 2004
Congratulations to Jay Mussell, Ph.D.
Congratulations to Jay Mussell, who successfully defended his
dissertation entitled "A reexamination of Lipotyphla and Afrotheria using both
molecular and morphological analyses" on November 16. We thank Drs. Marc Allard
(George Washington University) and
Mike Novacek
(American Museum of Natural History)
for serving as external reviewers and attending the defense. Jay recently began a postdoctoral
fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Lori Kotch here at Johns Hopkins.
Posted: 28 November 2004
Congratulations to Shawn and Tonya!
Congratulations to Shawn Zack and Tonya
Penkrot, each of whom just received a grant from the Welles
Fund at Berkeley.
They will use these awards to support dissertation research study at
the University
of California Museum of Paleontology. We wish them the best of luck
in their future research endeavors.
Posted: 4 November 2004
F.A.E. welcomes new post-doc Kristin and new grad students Gina and Mike
The Center welcomes two new graduate students to our Ph.D.
program. Mike Habib comes to our department having completed his Master's
in Biology from the University of Virginia. Georgina McKusick joins
us from Chicago, where she finished her B.A. in Anthropology last year.
We wish them luck as they begin their first year studies.
We also welcome Kristin Wright, who is joining us from Northwestern
University's School of Medicine. There, she has been completing her
dissertation on the postcranial morphology of weeper capuchins in relation
to ecology and locomotion. She will be starting her tenure as a post-doctoral
fellow at F.A.E.
Posted: 6 September 2004
Congratulations to Dr. François Therrien!
All of us at F.A.E. extend our congratulations to François Therrien on his recent successful completion of his dissertation defense.
His thesis is titled "Paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) dinosaur-bearing formations of Romania."
François leaves to begin a post-doctoral fellowship for University of Calgary and Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada.
Good luck, François! Posted: 22 July 2004
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