Research profiles

These profiles provide a glimpse of the exciting work being done by the people at UCMP.

		Sheila Patek: The breakneck world of ants that bite fast and jump high UCMP curator and professor Sheila Patek hadn't worked with ants at all — that is, until she received a FedEx box full of them in the mail in the fall of 2004. That package marked both her introduction to myrmecology and the beginning of an investigation destined to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.				Mark Goodwin: Research profile UCMP's Mark Goodwin takes a close look at the composition of dinosaur bones.

		Matt Wedel: Hunting the inflatable dinosaur UCMP grad student Matt Wedel investigates the hollow spaces in dinosaur bones. Find out what T. rex has in common with a Thanksgiving turkey.				The San Jose mammoth Read the story of the 2005 discovery of a mammoth fossil in San Jose, California and the work UCMP did to excavate and preserve it.

		Carole S. Hickman: Research profile UCMP's Carole S. Hickman studies fossil snails to better understand the evolution of structural patterns.				Jere Lipps: Research profile UCMP's Jere Lipps explores the evolutionary relationships among protists and other animals.

		Kevin Padian: Research profile UCMP's Kevin Padian address questions such as "how did flight evolve?" and "how did dinosaurs walk?"