Postdoctoral research fellow, Mammals
Biography
Sarah Shelley is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Section of Mammals at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Shelley received her PhD in mammalian evolution from the University of Edinburgh, UK in 2017, a MSc in Palaeobiology from the University of Bristol, UK in 2011 and a BSc in Geology and Geography from the University of Birmingham, UK in 2009.
Shelley is a mammal paleontologist whose research explores the evolution of Paleocene mammals in the wake of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, 66 million years ago. The goals of her current research are to utilize the anatomy of living and fossil mammal to figure out the evolutionary relationships of Paleocene mammals and infer aspects about their paleobiology and how they lived. In doing so, she hopes to elucidate how mammal species are able to adapt and evolve following catastrophic environmental upheaval associate with a mass extinction event.
March Mammal Madness
In case you missed it, March Mammal Madness has already started! What you may say is that? As an alternative to College …F is for Fox
By Sarah Shelley and John Wible For inhabitants of Western Pennsylvania, the word ‘fox’ as applied to an animal is usually reserved …C is for Cats
by Sarah Shelley and John Wible We don’t want to start a big fight about cats versus dogs, but here in the …B is for Beaver (sticks)
by Sarah Shelley The Section of Mammals at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History houses nearly 130,000 specimens. As a fairly recent …
Recent Publications
Wible, J. R., Shelley, S. L., & Rougier, G. W. (2018). The Mammalian Parasphenoid: Its Occurrence in Marsupials. Annals of Carnegie Museum, 85(2), 113-165.
Cameron, J., Shelley, S. L., Williamson, T. E., & Brusatte, S. L. (2019). The Brain and Inner Ear of the Early Paleocene “Condylarth” Carsioptychus coarctatus: Implications for Early Placental Mammal Neurosensory Biology and Behavior. The Anatomical Record, 302(2), 306-324.
Shelley, S. L., Williamson, T. E., & Brusatte, S. L. (2018). The osteology of Periptychus carinidens: A robust, ungulate-like placental mammal (Mammalia: Periptychidae) from the Paleocene of North America. PloS one, 13(7), e0200132.
