Stephanie E. Pierce

Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology
Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and Interim Curator of Mammalogy in the Museum of Comparative Zoology
(Not Accepting Graduate Students for 2024-2025)

Faculty Support: Tracy Barbaro

My scholarly interests are focused on assessing the link between form and function of the vertebrate musculoskeletal system – especially with respect to muscle-skeletal interactions during feeding and locomotor behaviours in modern and extinct animals.

Recent Publications

Brocklehurst R, P Fahn-Lai , S Regnault and SE Pierce. 2022. Musculoskeletal modelling of sprawling and parasagittal forelimbs provides insight into synapsid postural transition. iScience 25(1):103578

Simões TR and SE Pierce. 2021. Sustained high rates of morphological evolution during the rise of tetrapods. Nature Ecology & Evolution 5(10):1403-1414

Whitney MR and SE Pierce. 2021. Osteohistology of Greererpeton provides insight into the life history of an early Carboniferous tetrapod. Journal of Anatomy 239(6):1256-1272

Jones KE, BV Dickson, KD Angielczyk and SE Pierce. 2021. Adaptive landscapes challenge “lateral-to-sagittal’ paradigm for mammalian vertebral function. Current Biology 31:1883-1892.e7

Molnar JL, JR Hutchinson, R Diogo, JA Clack and SE Pierce. 2021. Evolution of forelimb musculoskeletal function across the fish-to-tetrapod transition. Science Advances 7(4):eabd7457

Dickson, BV, JA Clack, TR Smithson and SE Pierce. 2021. Functional adaptive landscapes predict terrestrial capacity with origin of limbs. Nature 589:242-245