Lab Head
John Rowan
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I received my PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology from Arizona State University as an affiliated student with the Institute of Human Origins working with Kaye Reed. My research broadly focuses on the evolution and paleoecology of eastern African primates and other mammals. I currently direct the Lothagam Research Project (West Turkana) and conduct field and lab work on other sites in Kenya and Ethiopia. Studies of the macroecology, biogeography, and conservation biology of living mammals also form an important aspect of my research program.
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PhD Students
Sara Magee
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Sara joined the Paleobiology Lab as a Phase I PhD student in Fall 2021, after completing her BS in Evolutionary Anthropology from Rutgers University and an Honors Thesis investigating the relationship between feeding behavior and jaw morphology in mammals. At UAlbany, her graduate work broadly concerns the relationships between human impacts, ecosystem change, and biodiversity loss in both the past and present. Her ongoing Masters research focuses on early Holocene to Recent turnover in Malagasy mammal communities, which aims to understand the ecological consequences of species loss in the present-day.
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Eve Omondi
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Eve joined the Paleobiology Lab as a Phase I PhD student in Fall 2022, after completing her BS in Zoology from Maasai Mara University and an Advanced Certificate in Paleoanthropology from the Turkana Basin Institute. At UAlbany, her graduate work will focus on the analysis of late Miocene taxonomic and ecological turnover in large mammal faunas from eastern Africa. She has participated in several field work expeditions in the Turkana Basin focusing on the late Cenozoic geology and paleontology of the region. Eve also held multi-year intern positions for paleontology and paleoanthropology collections housed at the National Museums of Kenya (Nairobi) and the Turkana Basin Institute (Ileret). Eve was recently awarded a Baldwin Fellowship by the Leakey Foundation to support her studies.
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Christianne Ormsby
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Christianne joined the Paleobiology Lab as a Phase II PhD student in Fall 2021, coming from East Tennessee State University where she completed her MSc in Geosciences (specialization in Paleontology). Her MSc thesis investigated the functional morphology and paleoecology of Nimravides (Felidae) and Barbourofelis (Barbourofelidae) from the late Miocene of Florida using morphometric analyses. At UAlbany, Christianne's doctoral work focuses on the evolution and paleoecology of Mio-Pliocene carnivorans in eastern Africa and their implications for understanding primate evolution through the lens of predator-prey food webs.
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Master's Students
Linet Sankau
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Linet joined the Paleobiology Lab as an affiliated Master's student in Spring 2021. She received a BA in History and Archaeology from Maseno University and is currently completing her MSc in Human Evolutionary Biology at Turkana University College. Linet's MSc research combines stable isotopic analysis of fossil bovid teeth from the Nawata Formation of Lothagam, Kenya, with data on body mass and functional morphology of the dentition. Through this work, she aims to understand niche differentiation among herbivore lineages as grassland ecosystems expanded in eastern Africa.
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