Nicholas D. Pyenson

I am a Ph.D. candidate studying in the Department of Integrative Biology and the Museum of Paleontology, at the University of California, Berkeley. My research focuses on the paleoecology, paleobiology, and systematics of Neoceti, or the clade of living cetaceans and their extinct relatives. I am specifically interested in how the cetacean fossil record can address questions about the ecology and evolution of tetrapods that make the great land to sea transition. My dissertation research uses the Middle Miocene cetacean assemblage from the Sharktooth Hill bonebed in Kern County, California, to understand the diversity and ecology of cetaceans during that time and how these features have evolved in North Pacific cetacean assemblages through the Tertiary. Other current research topics include: the evolution and biomechanics of engulfment feeding in baleen whales; the origin of echolocation in toothed whales; and the taphonomy of marine vertebrates.