American Museum of Natural History Research Library
author: American Museum of Natural History

Maisey, John G.
John G. Maisey is a Curator-in-Charge at the American Museum of Natural History, Division of Paleontology and Professor, Richard Gilder Graduate School. Dr. Maisey currently leads two independent but related projects researching sharks. One of them (supported by National Science Foundation Award No. DEB-1036488) utilizes tomographic scanning and computational segmentation to analyze modern chondrichthyan anatomy, as part of an international project to document the diversity and phylogenetic relationships of modern chondrichthyans ("Collaborative Research: Jaws and Backbone: Chondrichthyan Phylogeny and a Spine for the Vertebrate Tree of Life"). His other project investigates the anatomy and evolutionary relationships of the earliest chondrichthyans. Dr. Maisey is currently studying well preserved fossils from the Devonian of Bolivia, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and from the Carboniferous of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, in collaboration with postdoctoral fellows at the Museum and colleagues in France, Poland, United States, Canada and Australia. An important aspect of both projects is the use of high-resolution tomographic scanning at AMNH and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, to compare the anatomy of extinct and modern chondrichthyans. His findings challenge traditional views about jawed vertebrate evolution and suggest that modern chondrichthyans are anatomically far more advanced than was previously supposed. (source: AMNH website 2015)