The following is adapted from a talk given by Catherine at the International Paleontology Conference in Paris, France, on July 10, 2018:

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The following is adapted from a presentation given at the Los Angeles meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in October 2013 by Dr. AW Crompton. 

The aim of this presentation is to discuss the first appearance of ossified respiratory...

AW Crompton's 60 years of research into the origins of mammals have focused on the evolution of the head.  He turned for many years to extant animals in order to understand the complex functions of chewing, swallowing, suckling and other aspects of oral transport.  More recently he has returned his focus to early mammalian evolution, as scanning and reconstruction technologies reveal more of the interior morphology of ancient, nascient mammals. His recent studies of the...

Adapted from a presentation given in Greifswald, Germany in August, 2008 by AW Crompton.\

A ubiquitous feature of both placental and marsupial grazers and folivores, such as the goat and koala, is that during the power stroke of mastication the working side jaw is drawn transversely in a medial direction. The masticatory motor pattern or the firing pattern of adductor muscles responsible for this transverse movement in several placental herbivores is now relatively well-known. This is not the case for marsupials. The purpose of this project was to test whether the...

The following is adapted from a presentation given at the Berlin meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in November 2014 by Dr. AW Crompton.  

Living reptiles lack pharyngeal muscles. This was probably also true for primitive synapsids, or "mammal-like reptiles". Mammals on the other hand possess a complex array of pharyngeal muscles that play an important role in feeding, suckling, and control of water and heat....