Collaborators

Derek Main and I met several years ago at a Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting, where we first realized our common interests in climate patterns and dinosaur paleobiogeography. Currently we are working together to describe the rich flora and fauna of the Arlington Archosaur Site, located right in the middle of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.The major work at this site is mainly due to the tireless efforts of an amazing group of volunteers. I have never met a more professional and dedicated group of diggers. On the left Derek and I are pictured at the AAS (complete with Texas flag), on the right is just a small sample of the many great people working at the site.

Also at the University of Texas at Arlington I have had the distinct privledge to work with Chris Scotese, best known for his pioneering work on paleogeography.Together with his graduate students we are currently looking into methods to combine detailed paleogeographic reconstructions and high-resolution climate model data to address questions of Mesozoic vertebrate paleobiogeography and paleoecology.

Luis Chiappe is a curator at the LA County Museum and best known for his work on fossil birds. He has been kind enough to let me work with his crew on a very interesting sauropod quarry from a lower member of the Morrison Formation.

Ari Grossman is a long-time friend and former roommate back from grad school at Stony Brook. Ari is an expert in the early Cenozoic fauna of Kenya. He was instrumental in introducing me to the methods used on fossil mammals, which we then applied to understand paleoecological patterns in dinosaurs.

If you haven't heard of the Open Dinosaur Project (ODP) yet, you should check out their website. The ODP is mainly run through the tireless efforts of Andy Farke, Matt Wedel, and Mike Taylor. This endeavor marks a new way to get citizen-scientists involved in helping further paleontology through a method called "crowd-sourcing". I'm very proud to be a part of the ODP as both a data contributor and researcher. This data is a treasure-trove for people interested in functional morphology, paleoecology, and evolutionary patterns over time. It is all free and open to anyone to use. Expect to see some exciting papers coming down the pipe in the near future.