Jessica A. Maisano
Department of Geological Sciences
Jackson School of Geosciences
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712
USA

I am a research associate at the High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility at The University of Texas, Austin. I received my Ph.D. degree from Yale in 2000, working with Jacques Gauthier on postnatal skeletal development in squamates. From 2000 through 2003 I managed the Digital Library of Morphology. From 2004 to present I am collaborating with J. Gauthier, M. Kearney, M. Lee, T. Reeder, O. Rieppel, J. Sites, and J. Wiens on Deep Scaly, the NSF Assembling the Tree of Life project for squamates. We are scanning approximately 200 living and extinct squamate taxa for this project, including the adult Shinisaurus featured in this paper. All of these datasets will be made available on DigiMorph by project’s end.

My research focuses on the skeletal morphology of lizards. Of particular interest are 'extra-skeletal' systems (e.g., osteoderms, endolymphatic system) and the postnatal development of the skeleton (e.g., secondary centers, sesamoids, terminal fusions), which I investigate using a combination of cleared and double-stained specimens and high-res CT.