“Show me your teeth, and I will tell you what you’re adapted to eat”.
Those of you with a taste for paleontology, anatomy, or even natural history might find a hint of familiarity in those words. They are echoes of 18th century naturalist, George Cuvier’s own – “Show me your teeth, and I will tell you who you are” – modified and built upon by UW Biology’s most recent PhD graduate, Dr. Alexandria Brannick who defended her doctoral thesis with flying colours this August 20, 2021.
As was with Cuvier, Alex hoped to define functionality by way of morphological analysis. Focusing her research on metatherians – a group of mammals that includes marsupials and closely related, but very much extinct non-marsupials – Alex bit into aspects of dental, cranial, and jaw morphology, as well as phylogenetics and biomechanics to determine the dietary ecology of the long extinct mammals of this group. Her investigations into the morphology and biomechanics of a stagodontid species showed that durophagy (eating hard objects like shells or bone) independently evolved more than once, in this paper here. And, in further investigating dental morphology of fossil teeth, she determined that the majority of these extinct metatherians preferred the satisfying crunch of a well-balanced insectivorous diet. But, there were a few metatherians that gave other foods a try! By understanding diet and, more importantly, changes to a diet, she was able to ask whether ecological diversification coincided with taxonomic diversification.
On top of her productive research career in our department, she also dedicated a high amount of time to the DIG Field School program through the Burke Museum. We are sad to see Alex go but thrilled to see what comes next! Follow along with updates on Alex’s research and life by following her Twitter.
