黑料导航

Jason Bourke is a vertebrate paleontologist whose specialty is functional morphology. He studies the effects of soft tissue reconstructions on the physiological potential of extinct animals. His methods incorporate multiple engineering approaches (e.g., FEA and CFD) to achieve realistic results.

Bourke graduated with a B.S. in biology with a minor in geology from the University of New Mexico in 2006. He worked on an independent research project with faculty at the University of New South Wales, where he trained in finite element analysis, ultimately publishing a paper on bite performance in dingos in 2008. The following year, Bourke joined Larry Witmer鈥檚 WitmerLab at Ohio University, where he pursued and completed his Ph.D. Bourke was the first person to use computational fluid dynamics to reconstruct soft tissues in the nasal passages of dinosaurs.

His research is broadly focused on the evolution of thermoregulatory structures in amniotes, with a stronger focus on the vertebrate group, Sauropsida (reptiles and birds). This group is particularly interesting as they encompass both bradymetabolic (鈥渃old-blooded鈥�) and tachymetabolic (鈥渨arm-blooded鈥�) animals. Understanding how thermoregulatory structures function under these two very different thermoregulatory regimes aides our understanding of how thermoregulatory structures evolve, and provides a guide to the limitations of thermoregulation within our own species. Bourke鈥檚 work involves gross dissections of post-mortem-acquired animals, along with digital reconstructions of anatomy and physiology, using CT imaging, 3-D modeling, and fluid simulation.