Anne Kort

I am a paleontologist investigating the interactions between environmental change and the evolution of locomotor adaptations in mammals. In a traditional model of natural selection, when the environment changes, species unfit for the new conditions go extinct, while the lucky few with the right adaptations survive. However, a population or whole species could instead migrate to follow their preferred environment as the landscape slowly changes. My research asks how mammals with different locomotor adaptations, whether for walking, running, swimming, or climbing, responded to environmental changes at different spatial and temporal scales by either moving, adapting, or going extinct.

I primarily focus on the Paleogene fossil record of western North America, encompassing environmental transition from dense forest in a hothouse climate to cooler, more seasonal climates and more open vegetation. My Ph.D. research looked at how lumbar vertebrae evolved during this time, as mammals diversified in size and locomotion after the end Cretaceous mass extinction. I used 3D scans of fossil vertebrae to measure morphology and infer changes in locomotor adaptations through time.

For future research, I will continue to use 3D scanning of fossils and assess how morphological change coincided with environmental changes known from proxies like stable isotopes established by the long history of research in these areas. I am also working to create a computational model that combines existing landscape evolution models with population models to simulate locomotor evolution through deep time.