Tidbits

Congratulations!
To Leslea Hlusko on her four-year National Science Foundation grant for a project entitled "The Evolution of Modularity in the Dentition of Old World Monkeys." This project will focus on the dentition of baboons to learn more about the relationship between genotype and phenotype and their influence on morphological evolution as seen through the fossil record.

To Nick Pyenson and Emily Hunter on their marriage in June, followed by a honeymoon in Morocco. Nick also received a Geological Society of America Graduate Student grant for paleoecological work on the cetaceans of the Middle Miocene Sharktooth Hill bonebed, near Bakersfield, California.

To Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch, of the National Center for Science Education, on their recent book, Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for our Schools, published by Beacon Press. Eugenie is a Research Affiliate of UCMP.

Alumni News
Congratulations to Caroline Stromberg and Greg Wilson on their marriage in August. Greg will be returning to his position at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and Caroline has a one-year postdoc at the Smithsonian before they both head north to Seattle.

This summer Jessica Theodor moved from the Illinois State Museum to Calgary to take a faculty position at the University of Alberta; Anne Weil left Duke to take a faculty position in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, Tulsa; and David Polly returns from London (Queen Mary and Westfield College) to take up an Associate Professorship at the University of Indiana.

Welcome new students
To the Barnosky Lab:
Susumu Tomiya comes to us from Johns Hopkins University and will be studying paleoecology. Susumu is interested in the roles of interspecific interactions and environmental change in the evolution of mammals.

To the Caldwell Lab:
Molly Wright joins us from Bowdoin College where she received her B.A. Molly is interested in invertebrate reproductive biology.

To the Hickman Lab:
Erin Meyer joins us from Rutgers University. Erin will be studying the population structure and life history of the West Indian Topsnail, Cittarium pica.

To the Padian Lab:
Sarah Werning joins us from the University of Oklahoma, where she received a Masters on the histology of Tenontosaurus. Sarah is interested in how bone histology differs through ontogeny and across phylogenetic groups, and how it changes in response to things like climate, morphology, and life history.

Welcome also to
Johan Lindgren, who joined us this summer from Lund University. Johan is visiting us on a one-year postdoc to work on mosasaurs. His visit is funded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Roland Gangloff, who joins UCMP as a Visiting Scholar. Roland is a UCMP alum, recently retired from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Crissy Huffard as Research Associate of UCMP. Crissy is a recent UCMP graduate, studying octopus systematics and behavior. Crissy will begin a postdoc with MBARI in January.

News from the Collections
UCMP thanks Dr. Ronald Bonett, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and most recently a postdoctoral fellow with Marvalee Wake here at Berkeley, for his generous gift of a large collection of Cretaceous and Miocene vertebrates and invertebrates from Texas.