Dinosaur

Reproduction

Research on dinosaur eggs, nests, and reproductive tissues (medullary bone)

Selected Funding

2016 – 2020 National Science Foundation, Integrative Organismal Systems, Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER, award #1552328): Experimental techniques for discerning female-specific phenotypes in non-avian theropod dinosaurs (PI LE Zanno; w/Co-PI M Schweitzer)

2020 Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine: A new approach for identifying pathologic bone in living and extinct species. (PI LE Zanno, Co-PIs E Hyland, C Walker)

2020 Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource: Testing New Approaches to Clearly Characterized Medullary Bone in Birds and Unambiguously diagnose Reproductive Bone Tissue in Dinosaurs (Co-PIs Anne J, Canoville A, w/ LE Zanno, MH Schweitzer, N Edwards, A Van Veelen)

Selected Publications

Canoville A, Zanno LE, Zheng M, Schweitzer M. 2020. Keratan sulfate as a marker for medullary bone. Journal of Anatomy, First published: 04 January 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.13388

Canoville A, Schweitzer M, Zanno LE. 2020 (Invited). Identifying medullary bone in extinct avemetatarsalians: challenges, implications, and perspectives. Philosophical Transactions B 375: 20190133. doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0133*

*Winner of the NCSU Analytical Instrumentation Facility's Best Paper Award, 2020

Zanno LE, Avrahami HM, Gates TA, Tucker R, Makovicky PJ. 2019. Preliminary Data On Elongatoolithid Clutches And Associated Fauna From The Cenomanian Mussentuchit Member, Cedar Mountain Formation Of Utah. VII International Symposium on Dinosaur Eggs and Babies, Shiyan, China

Canoville A, Schweitzer M, Zanno LE. 2019. Systemic distribution of medullary bone in the avian skeleton: ground truthing criteria for the identification of reproductive tissues in extinct Avemetatarsalia. BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:71 DOI: 10.1186/s12862-019-1402-7

Canoville A, Schweitzer MH, Zanno LE. 2019. Do Female Penguins Resort To Medullary Bone As A Source Of Calcium For The Eggshell? J Vert Paleontol Progr Abstr, 2019, 73

Schweitzer MH, Zheng W, Zanno LE, Sugiyama T. 2016. Chemistry supports the identification of gender-specific reproductive tissue in Tyranosaurus rex. Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 23099 (2016) doi:10.1038/srep23099§*

§Ranked in the top 100 of 11,000 manuscripts published by Scientific Reports in 2015.

*Altmetric Score as of 3/8/2019: 99th percentile (ranked 392nd) of the 264,483 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals and 99th percentile (ranked 4th) of the 1,251 tracked articles of a similar age in Scientific Reports

Canoville A, Zanno LE, Zheng W, Schweitzer MH. 2017. Paleohistology Of A Gravid Oviraptorosaurian Dinosaur From The Upper Cretaceous Nanxiong Formation, China, With An Enigmatic Endosteal Tissue. J Vert Paleontol Progr Abstr, 2017, 93