21st-century approaches to fleshing out the past! Mission: to use the structure of past & present animals to interpret evolutionary history...and to share it!
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ALT Witmer stands next to a tall display cabinet filled with dinosaur skull casts at the Athens Public Library, which he just set up in advance of his upcoming public dinosaur event at the library next Tuesday, June 16th: https://bit.ly/4xrOiSM.
ALT The display cabinet at the Athens Public Library filled with dinosaurs skull casts from the WitmerLab.
ALT Witmer stands next to a poster at the Athens Public Library declaring June's them of "Unearth a Story", which is the context for his dinosaur exhibit and his presentation of a public dinosaur event at the library next Tuesday, June 16th: https://bit.ly/4xrOiSM.
ALT Members of the Deep Time Cognition grant team outside the Royal Society of Edinburgh. From left: Ryan Ridgely, Milly Mead, Mathias Osvath, Helena Osvath, Fraser Weston, George Poon, Kristina Kverková, Simon Grendeus, Thibault Boehly, Lona Lalić, Adam Manning, Larry Witmer, Thomas Rejsenhus Jensen, Steve Brusatte, Pavel Němec.
ALT The Deep Time Cognition grant team met in the lovely Kelvin Room at the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
ALT Group photo of the Deep Time Cognition team at the shore of Wardie Bay at low tide to collect 335-million-year-old fossils (lots of fish and plants are known but we mostly found shark spiral coprolites). Here Steve Brusatte is giving us a run-down of the history and geology of the locality. The fact that the 300th anniversary of the birth of James Hutton, "the Father of Modern Geology," was the day we were there—and Hutton (and Darwin!) collected there—made it extra special!
ALT The four principal investigators (PIs) of the Deep Time Cognition grant paused at Wardie Shore for a photo. From left: Larry Witmer (Ohio University, USA), Mathias Osvath (project director, Lund University, Sweden), Steve Brusatte (University of Edinburgh, Scotland), and Pavel Němec (Charles University, Czechia).
ALT OHIO rising senior Casey Funk scanning a Laysan albatross skull on the OU microCT scanner.
ALT OHIO rising senior Casey Funk carefully places a Laysan albatross skull on the OU microCT scanner.
ALT OHIO rising senior Casey Funk watches the scan of the albatross skull being set up in the scanning software.
ALT The results of the microCT scan of the Laysan albatross skull, showing volume renders of the skull in four different views.
ALT Three books written by Steve Brusatte sit on a table, each adorned with a relevant skull: an ostrich for the bird book, a Velociraptor for the dinosaur book, and an opossum skull for the mammal book.
ALT Justyna SĹ‚owiak of the Institute of Paleobiology at the Polish Academy of Sciences poses with the disarticulated skull bones of the Mongolian tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus, while surrounded by other tyrannosaur skulls.
ALT A final selfie with Justyna SĹ‚owiak and Larry Witmer before she returned to Warsaw and the Institute of Paleobiology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
ALT A specimen of Pinacosaurus that was described in 2003 by Rob Hill, me (Witmer), and the late great Mark Norell was made the holotype of a new species—Pinacosaurus hilwitnorum—in an article this week by Paul Penkalski. By combining the first three letters of each author's name, he honored our 2003 collaboration (https://bit.ly/4nC5PTU).
ALT Paul Penkalski studying ankylosaurian dinosaur skulls in WitmerLab in 2015. Here's a link to his 2026 Historical Biology article reviewing the systematics of Pinacosaurus and naming P. hilwitnorum: https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2026.2633178
ALT Justyna SĹ‚owiak of the Institute of Paleobiology at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, seated at a bench in WitmerLab surrounded by casts of skull bones of the Mongolian tyrannosaurid Tarbosaurus.
ALT Phil Currie and me (Witmer) at the CurrieFest event, celebrating Phil's 50 years in Alberta and honoring his contributions to paleontology and his profound influence on so many people, myself included!
ALT An amazing complete skeleton of the tyrannosaurid Gorgosaurus (TMP 1999.33.1 ) in the collections of the Tyrrell Museum.
ALT An amazing complete skeleton of the tyrannosaurid Gorgosaurus (TMP 1999.33.1 ) in the collections of the Tyrrell Museum. This specimen is notable for a number of reasons, especially for having a complete gastral basket (that is, belly ribs called gastralia).
ALT I had a full day in the exhibits on Monday when the Tyrrell Museum is closed to the public. I was able to climb into several exhibits to study original fossil specimens, but also take some great photos of the wonderful exhibits without museum patrons in the way.
ALT Graduating Ohio University senior Grace Vance holds her complete and submitted senior honors thesis on cranial vascular adaptations for deep diving in seals. In front of her on a table is the skull of an adult male hooded seal.
ALT Graduating Ohio University senior Grace Vance presents her senior honors thesis research on cranial vascular adaptations for deep diving in seals.
ALT Grace Vance presents her seal research poster to Dr. Kenneth C. and Gayle A. Reed at today's Research Fair for our Ohio Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Studies (OCEES). Dr. Reed is a generous donor to our OCEES student programs, funding multiple fellowships.
ALT Graduating Ohio University senior Grace Vance holds her complete and submitted senior honors thesis on cranial vascular adaptations for deep diving in seals. Standing next to her is Witmer, Grace's proud research mentor.
ALT First page of the Livius et al. (2026) article in JVP: https://bit.ly/48oGPZG. Superimposed on the page is a Zoom screen capture of Marissa Livius' master's proposal defense from May 2021 with Jordan Mallon, Witmer, Hillary Maddin, Michael Ryan, and Marissa.
ALT Photograph of a cast of the holotype skull of Panoplosaurus mirus (CMN 2759) in the foreground, with some other ankylosaurs lurking in the background (Gastonia, Ankylosaurus, Pawpawsaurus).
ALT CT-scan-based volume renders of the Panoplosaurus mirus holotype skull (CMN 2759) (top), a referred specimen of P. mirus ROM 1215 (middle), and a referred skull of Edmontonia rugosidens AMNH 5381 along with a slice through the snout (bottom).
ALT Photos from a May 2025 post (while finalizing details for the Livius et al. manuscript) focusing on the Edmontonia rugosidens holotype (USNM 11868). At top right is Witmer studying the old-fashioned x-ray film-based versions of the 1998 CT scan we made of the skull. The middle photo shows lateral views of the skull, and the bottom photo shows stereoscopic photos of the ventral surface of the skull.
