Dr. Michelle Stocker
Assistant Professor
Michelle is a vertebrate paleontologist who examines questions about the morphological evolution of vertebrates within an explicitly evolutionary framework. She has interests in comparative anatomy and osteology of tetrapods, biostratigraphy and biochronology, and macroevolution. She is interested in how a cladistic framework modifies our secondary inferences, such as the use of vertebrates for biochronology or our understanding of paleobiogeographic patterns, in the fossil record. She explores the acquisition of the ‘modern’ fauna through extinction and diversification events in multiple, well-sampled time periods. She uses CT and traditional dissection of extant animals to understand skeletal anatomy and osteological correlates in fossil specimens.
Current Students
Khanh To
Khanh is a PhD student whose primary research interest is in the origin of the complexity and diversity vertebrate feeding apparatus. By using extant species, a fuller understanding of extinct species can be gained. Expanding on her undergraduate research, she mainly focuses on avian cranial kinesis and its relation to the altricial-precocial spectrum. Outside of research, she enjoys reading, playing board games, and nature adventuring.
Rebecca Hawkins
Rebecca Hawkins is an undergrad majoring in wildlife conservation and minoring in computer science. She has a passion for ecology, evolutionary biology, and especially bone morphology. Because of her love of bones and evolution, she is working on an NSF-funded research project with Michelle to determine the relationship between head-first burrowing behavior and skull morphology in lizards, snakes, and caecilians through CT scans and 3D models of skulls. This project will eventually help develop a quantitative test for head-first burrowing behavior in extinct species of those groups based on skull morphology.
Christina Nelson
Christina is an undergrad majoring in Wildlife Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment. She grew up in the Pacific Northwest where she first acquired my interest in exploring the natural world in her backyard. She is very interested in ecological morphology, convergent evolution, vicariance, scientific illustration and combining the study of living form to apply to engineering through the field of biomimetics.
She volunteers in the comparative anatomy dissection lab and is working with Dr. Nesbitt to complete technical illustrations of Asilisaurus kongwe fossils. She is currently working on an independent study with Dr. Stocker to study how researchers combine concepts within science and engineering to bring disparate fields of study together to understand natural systems through a different perspective.
Ben Kligman
https://bkligman.wixsite.com/mysite
Ben is a PhD student whose research involves using the vertebrate fossil record and data from the stratigraphic record to understand how and why terrestrial ecosystems and evolutionary patterns change in geologic time. He is using vertebrate assemblages from Early Mesozoic rocks in the Southwest US as his study system. By integrating data on biotic and abiotic change, he wants to understand how events like climate change, volcanism, and bolide impacts can be the proximal causes of change observed in the fossil record.
Kayla Blatman
Kayla Blatman is a pre-vet student at Virginia Tech studying Animal and Poultry Sciences with a double emphasis in livestock and companion animals, and plans to graduate in May of 2020. She grew up in Herndon, Virginia with her family, dog and two parakeets. Spending as much time with animals as she can, Kayla has worked at a local county farm, rode horses and has volunteered at the VT Horse Barn and Sheep Barn. As a volunteer with Michelle, she currently dissects specimens that will be cleaned and added to the skeletal collection used for future research.
Hannah-Marie Eddins
Hannah-Marie is an undergrad Pre-Vet student majoring in Animal and Poultry Sciences with an emphasis in Livestock. She grew up in a military family traveling all over the states but this never prevented her from immersing herself in nature. Spending her childhood hiking in the woods and fishing in mountain streams helped her develop a passion for conservation, while working at a vet clinic taught her about animal welfare. Hannah-Marie is currently working with Dr. Stocker to study the anatomy of archosaur hands and feet and writing a descriptive paper. This could help explain ossification patterns of the wrists and ankles among reptiles as well as resolve relationships among phytosaurs.
Former Lab Members
Emily Lessner
B.S. Biology and Geosciences 2016
Justin Lau
Justin is a fourth year industrial design student in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. His work spreads out across many aspects of design: product, graphics, UX/UI, concept art, photography, and illustration, but aims to emphasize on visual development. Curiosity and a clear vision guides his work as he strives to communicate ideas powerfully.
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As part of an independent study, Justin worked under Dr. Stocker and collaborated with Mitchell Riegler on an exhibit in scientific illustration, in which he dissected multiple specimens, labeled them and drew various anatomical structures.
Justin Lau
B.S. Industrial Design 2017
Mitchell Riegler
Mitchell earned his undergraduate degree from The University of Texas at Austin, working on skeletal morphology of the lizard group Phrynososma (horned lizards). Working to complete his Master's degree at Virginia Tech, Mitchell now works on using stable isotope values in lizards to infer diet and aridity in the fossil record, with particular interest in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Continuing his interest in skeletal morphology, he has helped run the dissection lab, teaching students anatomy and proper dissection procedure.
Mitchell Riegler
M.S. Geosciences 2018
Krista Koeller
Krista is a second year Masters student interested in exploring patterns of convergent evolution. She has spent the past two years working on a project comparing the pectoral girdles of skinks exhibiting varying degrees of limb loss to explore the patterns of change in these structures and how closely they relate to the level of reduction in the limb. She has also worked on a project describing a maxilla from a large Triassic archosauriform from New Mexico, which has implications for the rate of recovery following the end-Permian Mass extinction. Next year, she will begin the pursuit of her doctorate at the University of Florida with Dr. Marty Cohn and hopes to explore convergent evolution from both a developmental and paleontological perspective.