NSERC: Research mode!

Yesterday, I had a meeting with my PI to discuss my direction in research. There is a lot of work to do, and I am super excited! I will tackle three projects, which will hopefully lead to my first set of publications. If I don't complete the work within the NSERC term, I am considering taking a fourth year research course (EEB498) to complete my projects.

Ceratopsian braincase and endocast
A study-in-progress is awaiting a detailed anatomical description of the braincase (the cranial bones housing the brain) and endocranial cast (i.e., endocast) of a ceraptosian (horned dinosaur) for publication. I will be responsible for building a physical endocast by molding latex onto the well-preserved braincase specimen (i.e., the old-fashioned way). Then, I will need to meticulously describe the anatomy of the braincase and the resulting endocast from the shapes of the various bones to the positions of the cranial nerve foramina. This should be a relatively simple task now that I am almost fluent in the "language" of cranial and neuroanatomy.

Generation of digital endocasts using CT imaging data
To further contribute to the growing set of literature out there on the brains of ornithopods (a major clade within the order Ornithischia, which is one of two major "branches" of Dinosauria), I will need to master a computer program called Avizo so that I can analyze the computed tomography (CT) data of new braincases and create digital endocasts out of them. The beauty of CT technology is that we can now infer the dimensions and shape of the endocranial cavity without destroying the fossil braincase bones (back in the day, they had to use plaster to fill the cavity and then break the bone around the plaster to make a brain model). The new braincases to be studied are of lambeosaurine hadrosaurids (crested duck-billed dinosaurs). As a complete novice of computers and any program thereof, getting over this learning curve will be the RDS (rate determining step) for me this summer. It will require a big push on my part. There will be no catalysts (except video tutorials and a giant manual) to lower the hill for me.

Dinosaur brain size evolution
Finally, the last project that I will hopefully get to this summer will involve the incorporation of more macroevolutionary concepts. At the end of gathering data for the additional hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs) from the second project, we will have a fairly good set of ornithopod data to perform some quantitative comparison of brains across taxa. I have kicked off this project already, researching and gathering data for the endocasts of ornithopods by scavenging through all relevant literature (research involves a lot of reading). The intriguing observation inspiring this project is that in hadrosaurs, brain size relative to the body shows an increasing trend, whereas in the more "basal" taxon Iguanodon and sister clade ceratopsians appear to have retained the plesiomorphic (ancestral) small brain size. The topic of brain size evolution may be of special interest to humans: I know I'm certainly interested in the one significant change that made us who we are. So many factors are theorized to be involved in brain size and why a brain evolved to be the size it is in each species, from metabolic and developmental constraints to the adaptive value of heightened "intelligence", however that may be defined. The main task here will be to compare the relative brain sizes within ornithopods to infer the direction of evolution and, if I'm good/lucky, come up with a hypothesis as to why some dinosaur lineages began to evolve larger brains while others kept small ones.