Project Grant N000142412385

This two-year, $286,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences program will support research investigating the importance of bone marrow consumption in human evolution. Specifically, the grant will fund an early career scientist to conduct independent research under the sponsorship of Colorado State University analyzing bone breakage patterns from modern animal bone collections and zooarchaeological samples. Using new 3D scanning and...

This $282,421 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) will fund collaborative research by the Colorado School of Mines to develop a new geological framework for studying key Asian fossil mammals and climate events from the Early Paleogene period (approximately 66-48 million years ago). The researchers will apply advanced geochronological methods, including magnetostratigraphy, chemostratigraphy, and radiometric dating, to precisely date and...

This $137,133 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) supports collaborative research by the University of California, Merced and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The research aims to reconstruct the interactions and dynamics of ancient marine ecosystems, focusing on the evolution of large marine organisms like baleen whales during periods of climate change and resource exploitation. The project will...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) supports collaborative research to study the effects of climate change on mammalian functional diversity. The $205,877 award to the Stony Brook University Research Foundation will generate 3D datasets from micro-CT scans of mammalian fossils and develop new AI tools to rapidly analyze functional traits like dental topography and limb morphology. This will characterize changes in mammalian functional...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $798,000 Project Grant under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to the University of New Mexico (UNM) for a 3-year research project entitled "The New Normal: The Continuing Influence of the Late Pleistocene Megafauna Extinction on the Structure and Function of Mammal Communities." The project aims to quantify the ecological legacy of the extinction of large mammals such as mammoths, llamas, and saber-toothed cats in the...

The National Science Foundation Division of Polar Programs awarded a $294,004 Project Grant to the University of California Santa Cruz under the Polar Programs federal grant program (CFDA 47.078) to conduct collaborative research on the extinct megafauna of Alaska from June 1, 2022 to May 31, 2025. The research aims to pinpoint the precise extinction dates of the last mammoth, steppe bison, and tundra lion in Alaska through extracting and analyzing ancient DNA preserved in frozen soil, in...

This four-year, $758,583 National Science Foundation project grant supports research into the developmental basis for sensory-skeletal integration in vertebrates. Funded under the Biological Sciences program, the grantee aims to understand how sensory systems influence and organize facial bone formation through three specific research objectives. The first objective examines gene expression patterns and the impact of modulating endothelin-1 signaling during critical periods of facial bone...

This Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences Program (CFDA 47.049), supports collaborative research between the University of California - Merced and the University of Alaska Fairbanks to reconstruct the dynamics of ancient marine ecosystems. The $112,243 award, spanning May 2025 to August 2027, aims to uncover how marine communities have responded to climate change and resource exploitation in the past, focusing on the...

This $916,173 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology (CFDA 47.074 - Biological Sciences) aims to develop a user-friendly conservation tool to help land managers prioritize actions to restore declining grassland bird populations across North America. The project will collect data on migratory patterns, genetic health, and reproductive output of three grassland bird species to build a genomically-informed, full annual cycle, integrated...

This two-year Project Grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Earth Sciences provides $174,000 to study mammals as indicators of ecological recovery following the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event. Funded under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), the award will support basic research exploring the relationship between topographic diversity and the reestablishment of mammal populations in the aftermath of the extinction. By strengthening understanding of the...