Katherine Marriott- Master of Science
- Brooklyn College
Katherine Marriott
- Master of Science
- Brooklyn College
Lead author, "Evolution of the Ammonoids": https://bit.ly/3bUbJ2e
Open-source ammonoid data: ammodata.wordpress.com
About
52
Publications
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Introduction
Lecturer in Earth Sciences and research group leader in paleontology at Brooklyn College; experienced research mentor for early college. Administrator for an open database for ammonoids.
Septal ontogeny and paleoecology of ammonoids; extinction recoveries of Devonian-Danian ammonoids and Neogene-Pleistocene vertebrates.
Finalist in 2018 International Award on Scientific Illustration for work on heteromorph ammonoids. Lead author/illustrator of "Evolution of the Ammonoids" (T&F, 2023)
Current institution
Additional affiliations
August 2021 - present
Position
- Adjunct Lecturer
Description
- EESC 1010: The Dynamic Earth, EESC 1080: Climate Change: Past and Present
July 2018 - September 2019
Astro Gallery of Gems
Position
- Paleontology Specialist
Description
- Responsible for sales of mineral and fossil specimens as well as fossil write-ups and identifications, display cases, fossil signage, educating the team on fossils, assisting as in-house paleontologist in others' fossil sales, and leading natural history-themed school tours.
April 2016 - August 2020
Freelance Paleoartist
Position
- Freelance paleobiological illustrator of (primarily) invertebrates.
Education
August 2019 - May 2021
August 2013 - December 2017
August 2009 - May 2012
Publications
Publications (52)
The name “Cetartiodactyla” was proposed in 1997 to reflect the molecular data that suggested that Cetacea is closely related to Artiodactyla. Since then, that taxon has spread in popularity, even outside the scientific literature. However, the implications of the name are confusing, because Cetacea and Artiodactyla are not sister-taxa. Instead, the...
Ammonoid sutures are geometric patterns formed by the intersection of the septa and the shell wall, and have long been a diagnostic tool for ammonite researchers for such applications as species identification, taxonomic relationships, ontogenetic change, functional and evolutionary morphology, determination of ecological niche, and other aspects o...
Abstract—The isolation of individual saddles and lobes has recently proven to be a valuable tool for the study of ammonite sutures, particularly in order to describe ontogenetic trends, or to increase sample sizes of available specimens with sutures. Factors for a given ammonite genus can be used to extrapolate the correct fractal dimension for a f...
Ontogenetic sequences of ammonite sutures have been uncommonly published since at least the mid-twentieth century. Where available, they commonly show only the juvenile stages of growth, and almost never mature growth phases. Plots of the complexity of sutures represented numerically, as well as ontogenetic sequences representing more than one whor...
Book Description
Ammonites are an extinct and charismatic lineage that persisted for over 300 million years. They were used, with other fossils, to corroborate the principle of faunal succession and launch the field of biostratigraphy. Despite intense research, many important questions remain unanswered. Furthermore, outdated hypotheses persist. M...
The oreodonts were among the most common mammals in the Oligocene and Miocene of North America, but their systematics has been a shambles for more than a century. In this volume, all the post-Whitneyan oreodonts are finally revised and updated, and their biogeography and paleoecology are also discussed. All the information on paleobiology databases...
A leptomerycid skull was collected at Badlands National Park in 2016 from the earliest Whitneyan "Leptauchenia beds" (Early Oligocene, ~32 mya) of the Poleslide Member, Brule Formation. This specimen, BADL 64015, is the first skull referable to Leptomeryx elissae and is by far the most complete specimen of the species to date. The skull is nearly c...
A leptomerycid skull was collected at Badlands National Park in 2016 from the earliest Whitneyan "Leptauchenia beds" (Early Oligocene, ~32 mya) of the Poleslide Member, Brule Formation. This specimen, BADL 64015, is the first skull referable to Leptomeryx elissae and is by far the most complete specimen of the species to date. The skull is nearly c...
Phyletic size reduction in the fossil record is quite common, and numerous studies document allometric changes in limbs after size reduction. Some instances of dwarfing (especially in rhinos, hippos, deer, goats, camels, and some proboscideans) show allometric changes to more robust limbs, while others (most proboscideans, pronghorns, and some othe...
The weird-looking tubular-snouted camels known as floridatragulines have been a controversial group ever since the first specimens were found in the 1930s. We describe only the second known skull of Floridatragulus dolicanthereus, which gives us a better understanding of the cranial anatomy and proof of association of the jaws and skull, because th...
The small, primitive 'oreonetine' oreodonts from the late Eocene (Chadronian) of North America have long been a systematic mess with gross oversplitting, failure to recognise post-mortem distortion of specimens and many errors in their descriptions. We describe some new fossils and review the group for the first time since 1956. Of the six genera a...
Abstract—Size-independent modifications to the fractal method have been employed by ammonite researchers since the 1990s as a way to exercise consistency when measuring ammonite sutures, and make use of those published without a scale index. In 2021, a new method to extrapolate the full hemisuture’s
fractal dimension using just the lateral lobe (L)...
Watch our virtual presentations on our research, then tune in to Agate Springs' Facebook live for a Q&A at 2pm EST/1pm CST/11am PST
Figure 2. As complexity increases, so does conversion value, but r 2 between converted and unconverted date decreases. margins of each septum. Like ammonite sutures, dendronotid-produced branching patterns in tissue increase in geometric complexity throughout ontogeny (Korshunova et al., 2019) (Figure 2) and the patterns formed at all stages of ont...
The anthracotheres were a group of primitive bunoselenodont artiodactyls, thought by some to be the stem group of the Hippopotamidae. Their fossils are found in Eurasia, Africa, and North America from the middle Eocene to the early Pleistocene. In North America, they are a rare but important member of the fauna, and they have not been comprehensive...
Previous studies have demonstrated complex responses by mammals that survived the end of the Pleistocene, a time of dramatic change in climate and the extinction of the megafauna. Some species got larger in the Holocene, others got smaller, and some got larger in the early or middle Holocene, and then returned to Pleistocene size ranges in the last...
San Josecito Cave, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, produced large samples of adult and juvenile bones of the Pleistocene pronghorn Stockoceras conklingi. The abundance of juvenile specimens allows the determination of the growth trends in ontogeny, and comparison of the growth trends in other pronghorns. We measured the four main limb bones (humerus, radius-ul...
The cranial appendages of pronghorns (family Antilocapridae) are commonly used as key characters in the systematics of their fossils, yet rarely have workers in pronghorn taxonomy explicity taken intraspecific and populational variation into account when distinguishing taxa based on their horns. In 1937, Frick split the group into dozens of invalid...
According to conventional evolutionary theory, small changes in organisms from year to year, such as in the beaks of the Galápagos finches, are the mechanism by which birds evolve in response to environmental changes. Yet all the studies published so far utilizing the abundant fossil birds at Rancho La Brea found no evidence of evolutionary respons...
Changing environmental pressures are associated with expected minor morphological changes in bird populations over just a few generations. This was first documented in Charles Darwin's studies on Galápagos finches. However, microevolutionary changes in the shape of limbs are not associated with climate, and usually another factor is the cause for t...
The evolution of the Galápagos finches is one of the most famous examples of how the environment drives the evolution of traits in birds. Other examples of modern birds also suggest that birds evolve rapidly in response to climate change. However, of all the birds studied so far from the Pleistocene asphalt deposits of Rancho La Brea, none of them...
According to Adams et al. (1999), Holocene pronghorns (Antilocapra americana) got larger around 7000 ka, then reduced in size at the end of the Holocene. This conclusion was based on very small samples from the late Pleistocene Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming (17,000-20,000 years BP), the early Holocene (early Plains Archaic culture, about 7000 years...
The isolation of individual saddles and lobes has recently proven to be a valuable tool for the study of ammonite sutures, particularly in order to describe ontogenetic trends or increase sample sizes. Factors for a given ammonite genus can be used to project the correct fractal dimension for a full suture based on step counts from just a section o...
Ontogenetic sequences of ammonite sutures have been uncommonly published since at least the mid-twentieth century. Where available, they commonly show only the juvenile stages of growth, and almost never mature growth phases. Plots of the complexity of sutures represented numerically, as well as ontogenetic sequences representing more than one whor...
Ontogenetic sequencing of suture fractal dimensions from a single ammonite specimen was not previously accessible without extreme measures. The necessity for destruction of the full conch due to whorl overlap or, alternatively, the prohibitively expensive or inaccessible imaging equipment for use by paleontologists has led to this rich source of da...
The discovery of exceptional soft-tissue preservation in the rear mantle
of a Jurassic Sigaloceras ammonite (Cherns et al., 2021) represents an
extremely significant window into ammonoid anatomy. However, it has
implications beyond those explored in Cherns et al.’s paper, which relate
largely to mobility, that should also be examined. This exceptio...
Abstract--Fractal dimensions as indices of geometric complexity for ammonite sutures are traditionally based on hemisutures, (half-sutures, from venter to umbilicus) which are visible on moderately eroded shell surfaces. Here, we describe a revised fractal measurement method requiring only the lateral lobe and saddle (LLS), the part of a suture not...
The novel coronavirus has presented specimen-access challenges to geoscientific researchers, including paleobiologists interested in fossil ammonoids. Ammonoid sutures are geometric patterns formed by the intersection of the septa and the shell wall, and have long been a diagnostic tool for ammonite researchers for such applications as species iden...
Peer reviewed paper from this project: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362680550_Ontogenetic_growth_in_the_Pleistocene_pronghorn_Stockoceros_from_San_Josecito_Cave_Mexico
Abstract
Fractal complexity is the number and configuration of subdivisions within a self-similar geometric entity. True fractals cannot exist in three dimensions; ammonite sutures and similar natural forms sufficiently mimic fractals to be quantified geometrically via a method based on fractals. The Step Method, gleaned from the measurement of irr...
Use of exceptional fossil preservation to extrapolate the life appearance of heteromorphic ammonoids.
Reconstruction of French Turonian heteromorph ammonite Ostlingoceras puzosianum
Morphometric research in biology, bioanthropology and paleontology usually involves measuring
physical specimens. The availability of 3D scanning and printing technologies has opened the door
to using digital information in lieu of possessing actual physical specimens. We are
morphometrically comparing actual physical specimens with traditional mac...
Questions
Questions (2)
Hi, does anyone have access to Holocene and Latest-Pleistocene sutures (either tracings or actual shells) from Nautilus pompilius?
I would love to know anyone's thoughts about types of data that would be useful in an open database. I live in the US, and traveling to museums to measure ammonites is not possible for all of the students I encounter or work with.
The database I've started (ammodata.wordpress.com) is similar to Open Dino and not really like Mindat or PBDB, and it makes data easily shareable so that anyone who downloads it has what they need to do a basic ammonite research project, even without access to travel funds, museums, or the best specimens. It mostly has data I myself already have, but I am looking to add coiling and W/D other data as well.
