The McGill University paleontologist, who died from COVID-19, was known for using multidisciplinary methods to explore the origins of amphibians, birds, and mammals.
Most small amphibious mammals have a diminished sense of smell, a quality that likely arose because of a tradeoff with thermoregulation capacities that allowed them to conserve heat in aquatic environments.
Scans of eight fossilized adult and infant Australopithecus afarensis skulls reveal a prolonged period of brain growth during development that may have set the stage for extended childhood learning in later hominins.
