This year, the Museum of Paleontology hosted 13 undergraduate students working in various graduate student and postdoc-led research projects. These projects were broad ranging, from the description of Maastrichtian vertebrate microfossils, testing functional morphology of mammals to examining patterns of leaf venation in tropical rainforests and studying fossil fish from Indonesia. We congratulate our students who proudly presented their research at the 2025 UROP symposium on April 23rd. 

Special mention to Liam McNulty, whose poster was awarded with a blue-ribbon distinction!

Mentors and undergraduate students at 2025 UROP symposium. (R) Hadeel Saad (mentor) and Raven Killebrew. (L) Rory Sweedler (mentor) and Liam McNulty.
Sara Zain (L) and Samantha Goldstein (R) presenting their research on Maastrichtian vertebrate microfossils of the Meeteetse Fm, Wyoming
Emma Risch presenting her work on bird biodiversity in South America at the 2025 UROP symposium

 

2024-2025 Paleontology UROP students:

Carmen Ricker
Testing Locomotor Categorization in Mustelids
Supervisor: Anne Kort 

Itamar Yahav
Uncovering Evolutionary Patterns through Unsupervised Machine Learning Clustering of Mammalian Lumbar Vertebrae
Supervisor: Anne Kort 

Samantha Goldstein and Sara Zain
Vertebrate microfossil assemblages from the Meeteetse Formation (early Maastrichtian) of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming: implications for 'Edmontonian' North American Land-Mammal 'age'
Supervisor: Rory Sweedler & Luke Weaver 

Liam McNulty
Vertebrate microfossil assemblages from the Meeteetse Formation (early Maastrichtian) of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming: implications for 'Edmontonian' North American Land-Mammal 'age'
Supervisor: Rory Sweedler & Luke Weaver 

Emma Risch
Bird Biodiversity Patterns and Savannas in South America
Supervisor: Ethan Shirley & Mónica Carvalho 

Raven Killebrew
Re-evaluation of fossil fish from the Miocene of Indonesia
Supervisor: Hadeel Saad

Roxy Perazzo and Becca Seay
An investigation into the link between elbow joint morphology of fossil mammals and ecosystem changes in the Mojave region
Supervisor: Fabian Hardy 

Kendal Boyce
From Fossils To 3D: Identifying the Middle Jurassic Cupules Of Puebla, Mexico
Supervisor: Jeronimo Morales-Toledo & Selena Y. Smith 

Dominick Noeker
Morphological study of diversity in a Colombian rainforest
Supervisor: Teddy Matel & Mónica Carvalho 

Luis Zacarias
Characterization of the leaf architecture of Annonaceae from the Amacayacu census plot, Colombia
Supervisor: Teddy Matel & Mónica Carvalho 

Dayna Mathis
Tropical plants living on past greenhouse worlds: Myristicaceae
Supervisor: Teddy Matel & Mónica Carvalho