Zachary Morris, Ph.D.

Dr. Zachary Morris is a morphologist with a focus on the developmental mechanisms generating patterns of disparity in both the fossil record and among living organisms. His research combines approaches from paleontology, comparative anatomy, and experimental embryology to understand how the skull has been modified across vertebrate evolution. He has trained in several major natural history museums, from the UCMP as an undergraduate, the UT Vertebrate Paleontology Museum as a Master’s student, and at the Harvard MCZ where he studied under the vertebrate paleontology curator Dr. Stephanie Pierce. He comes most recently from the Yale Peabody Museum where he was an NSF Earth Science Postdoctoral Fellow exploring the remarkable convergence in the skeleton of the roof of the mouth, or palate, among mammals, reptiles, and birds.