In order to tackle our most pressing global issues, we must be able to predict the outcome of changing environmental and climatic factors on the future of life. Nearly all research conducted on biodiversity and climate issues are restricted to the study of living organisms, which together comprise less than 1% of species that have inhabited our dynamic planet. By examining four billion years of life’s responses to environmental fluctuation, paleontologists bring real world data to bear on societal challenges.

Dr. Lindsay Zanno, Director of the Paleontology & Geology Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University, studies the interconnectedness of ancient ecosystems by uncovering how extinction events, sea-level rise, and global temperature rise impacted the evolution of dinosaurs. In particular, she uses new dinosaur discoveries from her on-going field expeditions to Mesozoic localities around the world (North America and Asia) to identify key factors in their success and tipping points leading to extinction. Determining the reasons why dinosaurs achieved global dominance in the Mesozoic and how birds--the singular lineage of living dinosaurs--ultimately survived the end-Cretaceous extinction event requires new approaches to studying dinosaur biology. Dr. Zanno and her team synthesize a rich fossil record with observations from living dinosaurs (birds) and other close living relatives, to tackle complex transitions in diet, social and sexual selective forces, and anatomical novelties in dinosaur evolution.

The Zanno Lab is on-exhibit to more than one million visitors a year and serves as a new model for 21st century museum science. Within this visible paleontology lab, graduate and undergraduate students are trained in cutting-edge research techniques, as well as steeped in a solid foundation of K-12 public education, teacher exploration treks, active citizen science programs, and science communication efforts.

Some of the Zanno Lab’s current projects include:

• Understanding How Ecosystems Change through Time: Dr. Zanno’s field research tackles the evidence for life on a changing planet during the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. To do this, Dr. Zanno and her team spend several months a year on expedition discovering and describing new ancient biodiversity and piecing together climate and geographic trends. Through these efforts Zanno is able to study how dinosaur speciation and extinction patterns correlate with ecosystem change. Every year, the team finds new species of dinosaurs previously unknown to science.
   
• Studying Theropod Dinosaur Evolution: Theropods--the group of dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor, and living birds--are the only lineage of dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous. Although birds seem highly specialized compared to other animals on the planet today, many of their unique characteristics such as feathers, foldable wrists, complex lungs, diverse diets, and reproductive strategies evolved deep in the theropod family tree. Dr. Zanno hopes to model the ecological “cradle” of birds by studying the evolution of diet, reproduction, sexual selection, and other evolutionary novelties during theropod evolution.
   
• Experimenting with 3D Visualization: Dr. Zanno’s lab is using next-generation visualization approaches including computed tomography (CT) and 3D surface scanning and printing to advance the study of fossils. A new and cutting-edge way to incorporate 3D into evolutionary studies, this  approach helps the team develop new protocols for analyzing anatomical and fossil data using 3D metrics. By further developing this technology, Dr. Zanno hopes to better understand sexual selection and phenotypic variation in extinct species.