Dr. Ross publishes 2 new papers with lab collaborators

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Dr. Ross has published 2 new papers in April. The first, coauthored with lab alum Dr. Amanda Smith, along with many other collaborators, finds that Homo habilis, while exhibiting australopith-like facial strain during biting, was not adapted for forceful molar processing, suggesting that dietary or food processing changes were significant in the emergence of Homo. The second, with Ross Lab alum Dr. Katie Whitlow and UChicago researcher Dr. Mark Westneat, finds that that bowfin, similar to teleost fishes, adapt their jaw movements, hyoid arch depression, and pectoral girdle motions based on prey type and suggests that the ability to modulate feeding strikes evolved early in actinopterygian fishes and may be an ancestral trait for jawed vertebrates.

Alec Wilken, Kaleb Sellers, and colleagues publish a new paper!

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Congrats to Alec Wilken and Kaleb Sellers on their new publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences! The paper uses 3D muscle modeling and linkage analysis to shed light on the origin of powered cranial kinesis in avian dinosaurs.

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Peishu Li lab member

Congratulations, Peishu Li, PhD!

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We are excited to announce Dr. Peishu Li’s successful defense of his PhD dissertation, titled Evolutionary Morphology of the Mammalian Hyoid Apparatus: Form, Function and Diversity. We wish him luck in his new position as faculty at Ohio University!

Alec Wilken, Julia Schultz, Zhe-Xi Luo, and Callum Ross publish new paper on load path analysis

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Members of the Ross Lab and collaborators have published a new paper in Journal of Experimental Biology. The paper describes using opossum mandible models to compare with in vivo data and calculate load paths, highlighting this method as a way to understand form-function relationships in the skeleton.

Emily McParland, Dr. Ross, and colleagues publish a new paper on rat chewing kinematics

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Emily McParland, Dr. Ross and colleagues, including lab alumni JD Laurence-Chasen and Kazutaka Takahashi, have published a new paper on the kinematics of chewing in the Wistar brown rat (Rattus norvegicus). This paper arose out of the fruitful collaboration between Dr. Ross’s lab at the University of Chicago and Dr. Nicholas Gidmark’s lab at Knox College. Because this species has an unfused mandibular symphysis, the kinematics are quite complex. The paper finds that due to the complexity, the rat is an unsuitable species in many cases for studying general mammalian chewing evolution or human chewing.

Dr. Ross publishes paper on primate muscle fiber measurement with Dr. Andrea Taylor and colleagues

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Dr. Ross is a coauthor on Dr. Andrea Taylor’s new paper on muscle fiber measurement techniques in strepsirrhine and platyrrhine primates. Evidence from this paper suggests that different techniques produce different results, and therefore the purpose of the study should be considered when considering which technique to use.