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

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!

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!

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

 

The postcranial anatomy of Whatcheeria deltae and its implications for the family Whatcheeriidae

Benjamin K A Otoo, John R Bolt, R Eric Lombard, Kenneth D Angielczyk, Michael I Coates. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2021; https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaa182

The early elasmobranch Phoebodus: phylogenetic relationships, ecomorphology and a new time-scale for shark evolution.

Frey L, Coates M, Ginter M, Hairapetian V, Rücklin M, Jerjen I, Klug C. The early elasmobranch Phoebodus: phylogenetic relationships, ecomorphology and a new time-scale for shark evolution. Proc Biol Sci. 2019 Oct 09; 286(1912):20191336. PMID: 31575362

High-performance suction feeding in an early elasmobranch.

Coates MI, Tietjen K, Olsen AM, Finarelli JA. High-performance suction feeding in an early elasmobranch. Sci Adv. 2019 09; 5(9):eaax2742. PMID: 31535026

Hagfish from the Cretaceous Tethys Sea and a reconciliation of the morphological-molecular conflict in early vertebrate phylogeny.

Miyashita T, Coates MI, Farrar R, Larson P, Manning PL, Wogelius RA, Edwards NP, Anné J, Bergmann U, Palmer AR, Currie PJ. Hagfish from the Cretaceous Tethys Sea and a reconciliation of the morphological-molecular conflict in early vertebrate phylogeny. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 02 05; 116(6):2146-215. PMID: 30670644