Welcome to the Coates Lab!
We sit at the crossroads of evolutionary developmental biology, paleobiology, and anatomy. Our research interests are wide-ranging, and broadly fall under the evolution and diversity of early vertebrates, as well as adding paleontological and comparative anatomy perspectives to evo-devo. We are also very interested in the use of new imaging and visualization technologies in our work, such as CT scanning and 3D printing.
NEWS
NEWSBLAST! Spotlight on Ben O2
It's been a busy summer for our lab members! Here are the highlights for Ben: Whatcheeria Grand Tour March - Ben was invited to talk at Stephanie Pierce's Lab (Harvard) at their Vert Paleo Journal Club Series May - Field Museum Members' Night duo livestream with Ken...
Baby lampreys had teeth (ok not really!) – Paper out in Nature!
Our new paper "Non-ammocoete larvae of Palaeozoic stem lampreys" is now out! Contributions were made from lead author/former postdoc/hagfish-in-training Tetsuto Miyashita, the dearly departed (to Kansas) Kristen Tietjen, and Mike Coates, the usual suspect involved....
What Cheer!!! Ben’s Whatcheeria paper is out!
Congratulations to Ben Otoo for publishing his first thesis chapter, "The postcranial anatomy of Whatcheeria deltae and its implications for the family Whatcheeriidae" in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society! In Ben's words... Whatcheeria is a stem tetrapod...
Recent Publications
Novel assembly of a head–trunk interface in the sister group of jawed vertebrates.
Miyashita, T., Janvier, P., Tietjen, K., Berenguer, F., Schöder, S., Marone, F., Gueriau, P, Coates, M.I. (2025). Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09329-9
Re-make, re-model: evolution and development of vertebrate cranial lateral lines.
Venkataraman, V., Lopez, M., Prince, V.E., Coates, M.I. (2025). Biological Reviews, Early View. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.70045
Development of the zebrafish anterior lateral line system is influenced by underlying cranial neural crest.
Venkataraman, V., McGrory. N.H., Christiansen, T.J., Navajas Acedo, J., Coates, M.I., Prince, V.E. (2025). Developmental Biology 525, 102–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2025.05.025
The lower jaw of Devonian ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii): Anatomy, relationships, and functional morphology.
Igielman, B., Figueroa, R.T., Higgins, R.R., Pierce, S.E., Coates, M.I., Troyer, E.M., Fernandez, V., Dollman, K., Lu, J., Zhu, M., Friedman, M., Giles, S. (2025). The Anatomical Record, Early View. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.70005