Professor of Anatomy
Midwestern University
Midwestern University
Beth Townsend, PhD, Professor, Department of Anatomy, Midwestern University, Glendale, AZ - Beth has been working in the Uinta Basin since 1995, when she joined the lab of Tab Rasmussen to work on her doctoral degree at Washington University in St. Louis. Since then Beth has spent almost every summer in the Uinta Basin collecting fossils first for her doctoral thesis and then she became a project PI when Dr. Dana Cope took over the project in 2004. Since 2006, she has been the lead PI bringing out field crews to collect fossils and other geological data. Additionally, numerous students, some who are now professional paleontologists, had their first field experience in the Uinta Basin during the field camps of 2004-2008.
At Midwestern University, Beth teaches anatomy to medical and other health sciences students as well as training students in research.
Beth's research includes evaluating mammalian community structure as a proxy for habitat and relating those habitat changes to regional and global climate shifts, studying the diets of extinct mammals using enamel microwear techniques, anatomical research of endangered living mammals, and developing anatomical atlases for animals such as the snow leopard, California sea lion, and dromedary.
