Page 4 of 8

Nancy Stevens, Ph.D.

Like Staron, Nancy Stevens, Ph.D., assistant professor of functional morphology and vertebrate paleontology, focuses on human musculoskeletal adaptation—at least in the classroom. She gives microanatomy lectures on the formation of bones and their response to stress.

But in the field, Stevens’ research takes her from Madagascar to the East African Rift to the Arabian Peninsula, alternately studying the adaptive habits of endangered primates and the evolutionary novelties of mammals more than 20 million years extinct.

Stevens travels the globe to document changes in the diets, locomotion
and other habits of endangered primates. For several years, she has
studied Eulemur cinereiceps, a lemur species at the Manombo Special Reserve in southeastern Madagscar. An article based on this work appears in the 2008-2010 publication of Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates. She is also working with Ohio University’s Aesthetic Technologies Lab on a multimedia archive documenting adaptive behaviors in endangered mammals.

Meanwhile, her paleontological work focuses on animals from the
Oligocene epoch, a mammal-dominated time that saw the appearance of horses and trunked elephants on the globe. During this time, when Afro-Arabia was separate from the northern continents, hyraxes of all shapes and sizes dominated the landscape.

Today’s hyraxes are small, hoofed mammals about the size of rabbits – “and very cute,” Stevens adds, noting, “They look like little smiling footballs … Back in the Oligocene there were hyraxes the size of hippos, hyraxes with elongated legs—they filled most of the ecological niches now
occupied by others.”

Once the Afro-Arabia landmass connected with Eurasia, new animals showed up and hyrax diversity took a plunge. Stevens studies how the mammals of that epoch responded to new competition for resources and climate change.

“Learning about the past is highly relevant to the present,” Stevens says. “Twenty-five percent of mammals are currently under threat of extinction.
I study how these animals respond to habitat pressures and how animals have adapted in the past.”

Joe Eastman, Ph.D

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]