Opportunities

Dental microwear is the study of microscopic wear on teeth to infer tooth use and diet in fossil species.  Our lab has pioneered microwear texture analysis, a 3D approach to automated characterization of microwear surfaces that combines white-light confocal profilometry with scale-sensitive fractal analysis. Our methods were developed in collaboration with Chris Brown and his team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute under NSF MRI and research grants.  Postdoctoral Fellow, Robert Scott (now on the faculty at Rutgers University), was instrumental in development of this approach, as were Alan Walker (emeritus at Pennsylvania State University) and Mark Teaford (High Point University). Details can be found at our microwear website!

Current microwear research:

Comparative Methods

Application of Engineering Principles