RESEARCH
Anything Mosasaur
From description of their skeletal anatomy to classification to paleoecology, I have been publishing on mosasaurs since as a graduate student, and there still are many more to come. By clicking below, you can learn more about those topics that are under investigation by our lab, and perhaps more important, that potentially need your contribution!
Western Interior Seaway
Have you ever heard of this ancient seaway before? It's a fantastic system to work on to elucidate the marine life during the Late Cretaceous period about 100-65 million years ago, right here in North America! It's a stretch of seaway that connected the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean east of the emerging Rocky Mountains. Find out what we're interested to know about this ancient seaway!
Secondary Aquatic Adaptation
What makes whales and mosasaurs unique among mammals and lizards, respectively? For one, they are both adapted to life in water secondarily, meaning that they each came from air-breathing, limbed, land-dwelling mammals and lizards, respectively. Despite their disparate phylogenetic origins, the degree of similarity to which the two groups show secondary aquatic adaptation is astounding--in other words, they show a great deal of convergent evolution, so much so that their skeletons look more similar to each other than they do to their respective terrestrial cousins. See what you read above holds true or not, by clicking the button below.