Профиль

This July my two major research tracks both have matured enough to be recognized by my peers via @science.org. Gratitude to my lab people & collaborators. I hope you enjoy reading the papers as much as we enjoyed working on them:(5/5) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Before I gave up completely on a research career, I got a job (lucky!). Four years later I got my current gig, where I felt free to "Be All You Can Be". The freedom to pursue interesting questions was FULL of false starts & dead ends, but a few projects flourished. My team endured & got funded (4/5)

Later, on the job market I often felt out of place during interviews: many open positions targeted specialists. I was doing multiple lines of research that have not yet led to major results or publications. I almost chose just one aspect to drill down on. But for better or worse, I never did. (3/5)

As an undergraduate just getting started in research, I could not decide which topic I loved more: functional morphology and biomechanics, or vertebrate paleontology. My mentors in two labs (S. Patek, S. Hopkins) let me work on two senior projects so I didn’t have to pick one. (📷Getty Images)(2/5)

#FossilFriday flashback: My lab published two major papers this month on 1) dental functional morphology and 2) vertebrate paleontology & paleobiogeography. It made me so proud of the research teams I've been a part of over the past decade, but it also prompted reflection on my academic path (🧵1/5)

Very lucky!

That’s what I was thinking when I was watching that episode!

An informative and interesting thread on the tectonic perspective to the question of isthmus formation tempo and mode:

An analysis of fossil mammals in Science suggests that Mexico served as a long-term evolutionary “holding pen” where North American species adapted and diversified for millions of years before sweeping into South America 2.8 million years ago. https://scim.ag/4fu2QKL

Here is @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social Bob Sanders' write-up of our Great American Biotic Interchange work: news.berkeley.edu/2026/07/30/n...

North and South America weren’t always connected, but their mammals still found a way to intermingle - Berkeley NewsBefore the Panamanian land bridge formed about 3 million years ago, mammals on the two continents were isolated — or so biologists thought. New fossils show that they found ways to mix long before tha...news.berkeley.edu

Thank you Juan!

Thanks to U.S. National Science Foundation collaborative research awards EAR 2102772, EAR 1949814, and EAR 1949742, NSF REU supplements, the Instituto de Geociencias of UNAM, and all other partner institutions for funding and amazing team effort.

In sum: our new data & analyses provide a refined view of pre-GABI mammal movements, and underscore the untold stories in the latitudinal dimension of the GABI. Collection of primary field data is unreplaceable. Central America and the Panamanian land bridge region need more fieldwork! 🔨🪨🦴(11/11)

Our findings suggest that Mexico went from a sealed holding pen to a leaky one prior to the GABI pulses. A broad swath of mammals that eventually crossed continents were part of this holding pen, suggesting that true GABI-style corridors were unlikely to have been present earlier. (📷: NBC) (10/11)

What’s more: we also noticed a tendency for larger-bodied and dryer-environment adapted mammal clades to participate in the holding pen. This matches our stable isotope data from Mexico, suggesting that vegetational shifts played a role in which mammals made the journey in and across Mexico (9/11)

We then detected a different phase between the holding pen and GABI pulses, when faunal connectivity increased between Mexico and the rest of the Americas. This connectivity increased asymmetrically, with more North American taxa in Mexico earlier than increases in South American taxa there. (8/11)

We also observed an accumulation of higher latitude mammals in Mexico from 10-7 Ma. The pattern represents a ‘holding pen’ previously proposed by Flynn, Woodburne, and colleagues. However, this holding pen is more than twice as old as what they saw with earlier, less complete fossil records. (7/11)

We estimated diversification rates and faunal connectivity patterns across the Americas, vetting taxonomic occurrences and accounting for uncertainties in fossil age ranges. We discovered a latitudinal signal of fossil mammal movements in the 7 million years leading up to GABI pulses (6/11)

We collectively conducted more than 30 years of fieldwork in Mexico in 12-3 Ma deposits. We analyzed this and other published data by treating Mexico as an intermediate biogeographic unit between higher latitude North America and South America, testing for latitudinal gradients in dispersal (5/11)