About | gabriellerusso

Hi, I'm Gabrielle Russo,

Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University.

I am a biological anthropologist who specializes in primate functional anatomy and evolution. Much of my research focuses on major transformations to the axial skeleton (i.e., head and vertebral column) that occurred during ape and human evolution.

I am particularly interested in dramatic changes that took place in the Miocene

(~ 23 to 5 million years ago [Ma]), including the loss of an external tail in early apes, the adoption of more upright trunk postures in apes of a modern aspect, and the acquisition of adaptations to walking on two legs (bipedalism) in early hominins.

I emphasize comparative, evolutionary, developmental, and experimental research frameworks, and combine lab- and field- based research approaches.

My lab at Stony Brook University (SBU)

– the Functional Morphology Lab – houses morphometric equipment and custom-built workstations for the collection, visualization, and analysis of 3-D anatomical datasets.

I am also co-Director of paleontological research at a Middle Miocene site (Napudet; 13 Ma) in Kenya known for yielding ape fossils.

My dual-stream research program positions me to both discover (via field work) the fossils that serve as primary sources of information concerning ape and human evolution, and analyze (via lab work) the associations between anatomy and behavior among living primates and other mammals in order to apply this knowledge to interpretations of the fossil record.