Welcome
I am a biological anthropologist and anatomist at The Ohio State University. My research focuses on understanding the relationship between skeletal anatomy and behavior. I study the evolution of modern human skeletal anatomy and how we evolved anatomical features that distinguish us from our ancestors (hominins), and our similarities in those features with other mammals with whom we share certain behavioral traits.
The Skeletal Anatomy Lab (SAL)’s research can be broken into four main themes:
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Understanding the emergence of gracile morphology by sampling trabecular bone morphology in fossil hominins and modern human populations from diverse geographical locales engaging in diverse subsistence strategies.
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Investigating the role of behavioral selection specifically self-domestication on the emergence of gracile morphology. We compare trabecular and cortical bone of various mammalian taxa that have undergone domestication vs. their wild counterparts such as canids, felids, great apes among others.
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Investigating the effect of locomotor behavior on bone functional morphology through the analysis of trabecular bone and cortical bone in fossil hominins, extant primates, fossil and extant big cats.
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Baringo paleontological field research in Plio-Pleistocene deposits. We focus on the recovery, documentation and analysis of fossil remains which will ultimately contribute to the understanding of Plio-Pleistocene paleobiology at a microscale.
