In Summer 2021, Erica Scarpitti received her baccalaureate degree with Honors Research Distinction in Earth Sciences, following the SES track in Petroleum Geology and Geophysics. Her thesis, advised by Dr. Jonathan Calede of the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, was on the topic of locomotion in fossil rodents. Erica developed a method that does not require complete fossils to determine the type of locomotion in which the organisms engaged. In addition to being a new method, her research was highly quantitative and used morphometrics of the auditory bulla to infer locomotion method by the specimen. The work has recently been published in the Journal of Anatomy.
Additionally, Scarpitti has recently been awarded a highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship that will support her Ph.D. studies in paleoclimatology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Vanderbilt University. At Vanderbilt, Erica will be studying paleoclimatology with Dr. Jessica Oster. She hopes to investigate the mechanisms involved in the closing of the Isthmus of Panama, and how that affected the Great American Biotic Interchange, with the intent of combining her long interest in paleontology with her newly minted climatological interests.