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Fall 2012

Williams, Bronwyn W.

Geographical limits of a species’ range are determined in part by the environmental tolerances of that species, and also by its past and current ability to colonize new areas. Range shifts are a common occurrence in the evolutionary history of almost all taxa; however, anthropogenically-mediated...

Spring 2016

Street, Hallie P.

Mosasauridae is a lineage of extinct marine squamates that inhabited the world’s oceans during the Late Cretaceous (100-66 Ma). The name Mosasaurus was given to the first described specimen, which was a fossil discovered in Maastricht, the Netherlands, during the 1770s. Naturalists of the time...

Spring 2016

Buckley, Lisa G

Data used in the systematic paleontology of extinct vertebrates is limited to what can be collected from detailed comparisons of preserved anatomy. This restricts vertebrate paleontologists to those characters preserved on osteological specimens. Furthermore, parataxonomies such as ichnotaxonomy...

Fall 2012

Miyashita, Tetsuto

The question of whether a hagfish is a true vertebrate or not has profound implications about the ancestry of the clade. New anatomical evidence allows a test of their systematic position. With dissections and serial sections of original specimens, and with a literature review, a comparative...

Fall 2016

Tao,Qian Y

Sourdough is used as an additive in bread production for proper dough volume (leavening), or for desired dough acidity, or for dough texture and bread flavor improvement, or for bread shelf life extension. Lactobacillus reuteri, an intestinal isolate and a stable member of sourdough, prevails in...

Spring 2022

Dyer, Aaron David

Pachycephalosauridae (pachcycephalosaurids) were small to medium sized bipedal ornithischians, known solely from the Late Cretaceous of North America and Asia. These dinosaurs are characterised by thick, often domed frontals and parietals (frontoparietal dome), which are thought to have been used...

Fall 2011

Su, Shu-Wei

Lactobacillus reuteri is a common organism in cereal-based foods and a gut symbiont in humans and animals, yet the molecular mechanisms allowing its persistence in various niches are not well understood. L. reuteri LTH2584 produces reutericyclin and persists in industrial sourdoughs, where acidic...

Spring 2015

Kruk, Elizabeth A

Pachyrhinosaurus is a peculiar ceratopsian known only from Upper Cretaceous strata of Alberta and the North Slope of Alaska. The genus consists of three described species Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis, Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai, and Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum that are distinguishable by cranial...

Fall 2015

McDonald, Christianne M

Speciation can be an elaborate process. Delimiting species and reconstructing evolutionary relationships may be similarly complex, revealing gene tree discordance, cryptic species, geographic structuring or hybridization. In order to solve such systematic problems, a careful balance should be...

Fall 2014

Palci, Alessandro

With well over 3,400 described species, snakes undoubtedly represent one of the most successful groups of reptiles. Much has been written about their ecology, behavior, anatomy, relationships and evolution. However, despite the debate about the origin of this taxonomic group dating back to the...