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Heather White Awarded John C. Marsden Medal 2024
Dr Heather E. White has been awarded this year’s John C. Marsden Medal for her thesis ‘Shaping the mammalian skull: Modelling how suture morphology, complexity, and development drive cranial evolution’.
Cranial morphology in mammals can provide us with an understanding of a species’ ecology, locomotion, and development, yet little attention has been dedicated to the morphology of the sutural joints, between cranial bones.
Heather’s research compiled the largest mammalian ontogenetic comparative dataset to date, providing much-needed quantification of the interaction between suture and skull development. The thesis proposes that developmental mechanisms shaping suture morphology are central to the evolution of mammalian cranial phenotypic diversity.