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.